'You just can't': Heritage Festival not happy with planned 3-year closure of Hawrelak
The leader of Edmonton's Heritage Festival is pushing back against a city plan to close Hawrelak Park for three years for a massive rebuild.
The $65 million project was initially pitched as a 10-year-rehabilitation project, but festival executive director Jim Gibbon said the new plan is a complete construction closure starting in 2023.
"There's a fair bit of work. But all of it could be done small and piecemeal without shutting down the park. It's the shutting down the park bit that I don't get," Gibbon said Wednesday.
The city's plans include dredging the lake to improve water quality, upgrading picnic sites to make them more accessible, replacing the playground and adding lighting for security.
Crews will also renovate the pavilion, boathouse, washrooms and service yard.
Paths will be added and roads will be rebuilt and repaved and bicycle parking will be added.
The Heritage Amphitheatre will also be updated including new washrooms, lighting and a reconfigured green room. Crews will inspect the seats to see if they need to be fixed or replaced.
About 47 per cent of the work will be on underground utilities, the city's project page said.
Coun. Andrew Knack sympathized with Gibbon and other festival operators and called the park a "critical space in the heart of our city."
He added that city staff plan to tour the site with event organizers to explain, but Knack worries a lengthy closure is unavoidable.
"I don't want to see the festivals and events shut down, I'm sure our city staff don't. So if there's ways to do it, then we would have done it, but it doesn't sound like there's a way to do it, which is really too bad," he said.
BORDEN PARK WILL NOT WORK: GIBBON
Gibbon said the city is recommending he move the festival to Borden Park.
But because it's smaller and full of trees, Gibbon said they'd have to slash the amount of pavilions and people who could attend by about half.
"You can't put Heritage Fest there. You just can't."
The festival has been in Hawrelak since 1976. Gibbon said not even the deadly 1987 Black Friday tornado stopped it.
"The tornado hit the Friday with all our tents set up, destroyed everything. Saturday the city, the province and Heritage Fest got together and rebuilt the entire event and we were up and running Sunday. We did it together," Gibbon said.
Gibbon agreed the park needs work, but he worries a closure will force the festival to move permanently.
"There's a history in this city of three-year plans becoming four-year plans," he said.
He's now appealing to city leaders to rethink the closure, and he said his organization will do whatever it can to help keep Hawrelak open.
"If we can just work together with the city, we can stay in our beloved park."
Heritage Festival 2022 is planned to run as normal from July 30 to Aug. 1. About 400,000 attend the festival each year.
With files from CTV News Edmonton's Jeremy Thompson
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
For the first time in report's history, Canada's air quality worse than U.S.
Air quality in Canada is now worse than in the U.S., according to the 6th Annual World Air Quality Report. Of the 15 most polluted cities in the two countries, 14 were in Canada.
A newspaper says video of Prince William and Kate should halt royal rumour mill. That's a tall order
Prince William and his wife Catherine have been filmed at a farm shop near their Windsor home, The Sun newspaper reported -- the first footage of Kate since she had abdominal surgery for an unspecified condition two months ago.
WATCH LIVE As former prime minister Mulroney lies in state, public tributes in Ottawa begin
Members of the public who wish to pay tribute to Brian Mulroney can visit his casket in Ottawa starting this afternoon.
BREAKING Roy McMurtry, former Ontario attorney general, dies at 91
CTV News has confirmed that former Ontario attorney general Roy McMurtry has died.
Hertz CEO out following electric car 'horror show'
The company, which announced in January it was selling 20,000 of the electric vehicles in its fleet, or about a third of the EVs it owned, is now replacing the CEO who helped build up that fleet, giving it the company’s fifth boss in just four years.
'You ask for your money, they disappear': Ontario man loses $17K to AI crypto scam
A Toronto man is spreading the word of a cryptocurrency scam that lures victims using AI-generated news sites after he lost $17,000 in investments.
Images taken deep inside melted Fukushima reactor show damage, but leave many questions unanswered
Images taken by miniature drones from deep inside a badly damaged reactor at the Fukushima nuclear plant show displaced control equipment and misshapen materials but leave many questions unanswered, underscoring the daunting task of decommissioning the plant.
DEVELOPING February inflation rate slows to 2.8% as price growth unexpectedly eases
Canada's annual inflation rate unexpectedly fell to 2.8 per cent last month, amid sharp declines in cellular and internet services as well as slower grocery price growth.
High thoughts: The habits of Canadian cannabis users are revealed in a new StatCan report
Statistics Canada has conducted a series of surveys to measure the impacts of legalized cannabis since the Cannabis Act took effect in 2018. The latest one, the 2023 National Cannabis Survey, sheds light on users' preferences and habits last year.