Heritage Festival moving to Borden Park and Exhibition Lands

With Hawrelak Park closing for a long-term rehabilitation project, the Edmonton Heritage Festival announced the new three-year temporary site that will be used for the annual August long-weekend celebration.

On Thursday, the board of directors representing the festival's association announced Edmonton's Exhibition Lands and Borden Park would be the new home for the cultural celebration.

Jim Gibbon, Edmonton Heritage Festival Association executive director, said organizers were feeling relieved that the event will still be able to celebrate its 50th anniversary.

"We've been working on this for four years," Gibbon said. "To finally have a site is wonderful."

The festival entered into a memorandum of understanding with the city that includes an agreement about cost coverages for expenses beyond what it would pay at Hawrelak Park and improvements for the north side park's access points.

• 'You just can't': Heritage Festival not happy with planned 3-year closure of Hawrelak
• 'Our supplies are very low': Edmonton Food Bank counting on Heritage Festival to fill empty shelves

Gibbon says there are many advantages to having the festival on the north side, including a closer LRT connection and more parking options.

"One of the things we always say is we don't want to be a southwest Edmonton festival, we want to be an Edmonton festival," he added. "It's exciting."

In the past, Heritagefest said the Borden Park space alone would not be big enough to accommodate the event. Gibbon says what changed that was the city allowing the use of the Exhibition Lands and the infield areas of the former Northlands horse racing track.

"Now, I think we are up to 17 hectares and counting, including parking," Gibbon said. "So we might even have an opportunity to grow a little bit which is fantastic."

While the festival will have a "challenging" set-up period, with K-Days tearing down, Gibbon says organizers are hopeful of making the most of it, like looking at integrating the K-Days slide and indoor spaces.

"Lots to do ahead," Gibbon said. "The switchover is going to take a lot of planning. We are going to do it, but I wish we had another year (to plan)."

"Ultimately, we are hoping we can beat our old record of 416,000 people (attending)."

Additionally, the festival says the agreement with the city includes a guaranteed right to return to Hawrelak Park once the planned closure is completed.

"We really want to come back to this beautiful park we helped build and help make amazing," Gibbon said.