Not in Blatchford but the former Value Village at 103 St and 118 Ave has an active building permit for renos submitted by No Frills. Huge news for Westwood and the surrounding neighbourhoods. Undoubtedly related to booming infill in the area and of course Blatchford. A long standing food desert eliminated!
The new location will tie in a lot better with NAIT's growth lands and the Blatchford Market neighbourhood. The old location would be nicer in the short term, but longer term I think the new location is a better choice.
I posted about it a few days ago yeah, but it's definitely worth talking about more. So excited to have a fire station right by the neighbourhood! And I bet the fire crews are happy too, given that they spent a few years doubled up in another station after their old one was demolished for the Yellowhead work.
The new location will tie in a lot better with NAIT's growth lands and the Blatchford Market neighbourhood. The old location would be nicer in the short term, but longer term I think the new location is a better choice.
They moved the dirt ramp from the southwest corner to the northwest corner yesterday. Didn't the development permit mention underground parking? I can't imagine they'll be digging any deeper at this point, so would it still even be possible to have one? Or maybe they're the ones who want to have surface parking along the alley?
Plus, living in one of the more NW locales in Blatchford, it's actually fine. It can and will get better as infrastructure fills in and trees grow and there's a bit less empty, but I have lived shorter distances from LRT stations and had worse walks to the station due to less walkable infrastructure. Everywhere else that I have lived, I've had to cross at least one terrible stroad to reach the station and then take a whole bunch of stairs once I reached the station. In real world terms, I am leaving the same amount of time before my train as I did when I lived right at Belvedere or a few blocks from Government Centre. Or if I had to walk to catch the route 8 at Abbottsfield when I lived in Abbottsfield. It feels positively luxurious by comparison even if I am perhaps technically moving my feet slightly more.
Would it be nicer if it were closer? Sure. But given the other points north that it was supposed to service, the location of the line itself makes sense once NAIT was locked in as a destination. Where it runs now has a comparatively easy crossing of the CN yard, and it lands on green space on the other side and greatly reduces the amount of Calder that has to be demolished.
The original winning plan as submitted to the design competition did call for a tram line through Blatchford to the LRT station, then south along 109 street to downtown, but that was not a municipal plan but consultants imagining a scenario with unlimited free money, and absolutely would have required cannibalizing the Valley Line because there was no scenario where the Feds and the province were going to chip in for another LRT line. Construction in Blatchford would also likely be well behind where it is now because it's much easier and cheaper to build such infrastructure before the neighbourhood than after.
Yeah, they were absolutely given a chance to host an LRT station near the location of the old bus loop, but they wanted ETS off their property, and now they have a minimally larger parking lot.
They moved the dirt ramp from the southwest corner to the northwest corner yesterday. Didn't the development permit mention underground parking? I can't imagine they'll be digging any deeper at this point, so would it still even be possible to have one? Or maybe they're the ones who want to have surface parking along the alley? View attachment 699904View attachment 699905View attachment 699906View attachment 699907View attachment 699908
