City solicits ideas for historic power plant’s redevelopment

Cameras were granted a behind-the-scenes look at Edmonton's old Rossdale power plant on Friday as the city seeks ideas to repurpose the facility.

The City of Edmonton is soliciting ideas for redevelopment of an iconic structure on the banks of the North Saskatchewan River: the former Rossdale Power Plant.

The city put out a request for ideas in November for the redevelopment of the historic Epcor plant, which closed in 2012.

Inside the 100,000-square-foot building is a sprawling industrial cavern few people have ever laid their eyes on.

The city released a request for information (RFI) in November to try to acquire proposals from interested developers. The RFI provides applicants with all the information it has on the 94-year-old facility’s condition, history and current context as the Rossdale neighbourhood prepares to add thousands of new homes.

The province designated the power plant as a historic resource in 2001, when it was still producing power. The designation comes with restrictions for prospective developers.

“It’ll be part of the conversation that we have with people to understand that it’s not a free-for-all in this space,” David Johnston, the city’s principal heritage planner, told reporters.

“We can’t just rip out walls, knock things down and reinvent it into something modern and new.”

Any promising pitch will likely have to incorporate the deep Indigenous connection to the site.

The RFI will be open until the end of April.

Renovations to the plant will be part of the River Crossing area development, which includes infrastructure upgrades for most of the neighbourhood.

Avril McCalla, the River Crossing project lead, told media Friday the city is looking for interested parties “to identify what their vision might be, begin to define the pathway for how they would achieve that (and) which partners or what kind of funding streams they would be looking at.”

“We’re really striving for adaptive reuse down here, a way to create a public gathering space in this part of the river valley (that’s) supportive of the River Crossing business plan overall, downtown vibrancy and connection into this area of great significance,” she said.

Work is already being done to prepare the neighbourhood for another 2,500 housing units, parks, a new road and other transportation upgrades.

And city ownership of the building is what’s pushing the move to finally redevelop the old power plant 14 years after it closed, McCalla said.

The city has fully owned it for three years, during which staff have gotten to know the facility’s needs and potential approaches through an assessment.

“(Ownership) has led to a lot of information about the structure, the needs of this building, the opportunities that exist here, as well as the heritage integrity of the building, (so) that we were able to make all of those reports public,” McCalla said. “Anyone who may submit through this RFI has as much information as we have, essentially, about the building itself, its needs and the opportunities. That makes it different this time. We better understand the realities of this place that helps paint the picture for what it could be in the future.”

Once the submission period ends, the city will assess the ideas and eventually ask for more detailed proposals for the power plant’s future.

McCalla said the city is “optimistic about the level of interest in this building.”

“This is one of the most iconic buildings in our city,” she said. “Everybody sees it driving across the Walterdale Bridge. It’s in all of the shots of our city, and to be able to welcome the public into this space would just be amazing.”

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Jeremy Thompson