‘We’re super excited’: Construction on King Thunderbird Centre halfway done

Boyle Street's new King Thunderbird Facility is well underway, with construction half finished.

Boyle Street Community Services was excited to show off the progress on the King Thunderbird Centre Friday.

The facility, also known as okimaw peyesew kamik, will replace the old Boyle Street downtown location as the agency’s home base.

“This is a project that has been almost a decade in us trying to find a purpose-built facility for our community,” said Aidan Inglis, the director of programs and partnerships at the centre.

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“It’s somewhere where they’ll receive the services that they need and also feel proud and welcome to be in, and so we’re super excited.”

Friday, the construction at the new facility reached the halfway mark.

An important piece of the new centre is the Indigenous connection, as Inglis says many of the clients Boyle Streets serves are Indigenous.

“Having a building that is … inspired through ceremony, created through ceremony, where (clients) can see themselves, where we have access to cultural support services right when they come into the door, where we’re going to be able to provide that on a daily basis, that’s a big part of it,” he added.

“Also, we have more Western traditional (methods) that often come to mind when people think of healing, we have occupational therapists that are part of our dens, we have nurses and health teams that are on site.”

Some of the features of the new facility include an outdoor sweat lodge, firepits, a ceremony space, kitchens, showers and windows.

“Our past building ... it was an old banana ripening factory, so it wasn’t equipped for the work that we wanted to do, it didn’t have windows,” said Krysta Fitzgerald, the organization’s deputy executive director.

Construction began on the new facility in 2023, but it has faced a number of hurdles to get started, including a legal fight with the Katz Group.

The organization also faced opposition to the new building, which is located near Victoria School, but after the first development permit was revoked, the city issued a new one.

“We’ve never given up. That’s one of our values here at Boyle Street,” said Fitzgerald.

“We knew that if we kept our community (in our) heart that we would achieve what we meant to achieve, which is a home and a space for many generations to come.”

Boyle Street serves around 7,000 individuals each year, according to Inglis.

“Our city is changing … there are more desperate and vulnerable folks out there, the amount of homelessness has been on the rise,” added Fitzgerald.

In 2024, Edmonton was estimated to have more than 4,000 residents living unhoused or without stable housing.