City council OKs changes to Century Park project to allow retail street parking

The city has laid the groundwork for a new, privately owned neighbourhood in the Century Park area. CTV News Edmonton's Connor Hogg has the details.

City council has signed off on some street parking for further developments at Century Park.

Developers that own vacant land that has been used for transit park-and-ride have asked the city for special zoning rules to make it easier for them to build several residential buildings.

The southside Century Park site at 23 Avenue and 111 Street is made up of 12 parcels, two of which have completed towers and two others that are under construction.

Plans that K&H Developments revealed Tuesday to Edmonton city council show a dozen condo towers with retail at street level on the old park-and-ride lot, which has served Century Park since the LRT station and transit centre opened in 2010 as the southern terminus of the south Capital Line extension.

A representative for the urban planner for the development, B&A Studios, told city council on Tuesday that changes to the project’s initial design to allow for parking on the retail main street to encourage businesses to lease retail space, saying stores would struggle to survive under the original concept. The initial design was pedestrian-focused with no parking, wide sidewalks and driving lanes shared with bicycles.

“It’s really about the leasing strategy, ensuring that we have a thriving main street, that shops are filled, we have restaurants and bars, and people are actually able to enjoy a thriving street,” Brian Murray of B&A Studios told city council.

“It really helps leasing when they can rely on great visibility of parking right on the street itself.”

Jacob Dawang, a housing advocate who addressed city council, said he welcomes residential density being developed next to transit but believes the new main-street concept for the project misses the mark.

“Pedestrian-oriented retail streets are nicer to be in,” he told council. “They are more successful and more vibrant.

Ultimately, city councillors approved the change to zoning, including the change in design.

“We can’t mandate that someone spends millions of dollars to build something that we would like to see,” Aaron Paquette, the councillor for Ward Dene, said on Tuesday. “We have to work with a proponent to see what is possible.”

The roots of the Century Park development date back to the beginning of 2001, when Heritage Mall ended the leases of more than half of the 50 stores remaining in the mostly empty shopping centre. The previous year, the mall had lost its last anchor retailer, Sears, leaving all four of its department store spaces empty following closures the previous two years of Eatons, Wal-Mart and Safeway, with the grocer relocating to a freestanding store on the property that is still in use today.

Heritage Mall’s owner, Ivanhoe Cambridge, said at the time they planned to close the mall, demolish at least part of it and redevelop the land into a mixed-use development with retail, residential and office space.

At the same time, the city was mapping out its LRT expansion plans and meeting with residents to gather input. Its transportation master plan at the time called for light rail to reach Heritage Mall by 2010.

Ivanhoe Cambridge sold the mall in November 2003 to real-estate developers ProCura and Westbank Projects, who planned to redevelop the site into an urban village with thousands of housing units, shops and services, and a new name for it: Century Park.

Construction on the planned 2,900 residential units started in 2006 and all available condos sold out, but the project stalled two years later due to a global financial crisis.

Residential development started up again in 2017 with the construction of the 18-storey Central Tower, which opened two years later. Other low-rise buildings followed, including the 278-unit Century Gardens, which is slated to be finished this year.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Jeremy Thompson