Business park proposal that would relocate Fulton Creek, remove 6,900 trees fails to pass

A rezoning application that would relocate a creek in southeast Edmonton and remove thousands of trees to allow for more industrial land failed at a public hearing at Edmonton's city hall Wednesday.  

The application was submitted by V3 Companies of Canada on behalf of Fulton Creek Business Park with the aim of allowing for more land for industrial use near Roper Road, 30th Street and 24th Street. 

The complexity of the application meant requiring council to approve amendments to the zoning bylaw, the Maple Ridge Area Structure Plan, the North Saskatchewan River Valley Area Redevelopment Plan and the Southeast District Plan.

However, council was divided by what proved to be one of the most controversial aspects of the application: the relocation of Fulton Creek. 

The motion failed as the vote ended in a 6-6 tie during Wednesday's public hearing meeting. 

"I think council and our administration has been put into a very sort of compromising or contradictory position," said Coun. Jo-Anne Wright, whose Ward Sspomitapi includes the creek. 

Wright was among those who voted against the motion. 

"We're being asked right now to compromise our commitment and policy direction for environmental sustainability," she said.

"We're being asked to make a choice between the economic benefit — as slight as I think it is — in this specific land use case and the protection of our natural areas, which have been I think, degraded over the years." 

Wright also expressed concern over a lack of consultation with Papaschase First Nation. 

"I would have liked to seen a little more effort to connect with the Papaschase band," Wright said. 

"It was Papaschase band that stewarded these lands before they were stolen." 

CBC has requested further comment from Papaschase First Nation. 

City administration told council they were in support of the rezoning application after weighing the pros and cons of the project. 

An approved application would have seen an expansion of 4.9 hectares of land for industrial use and create up to 400 jobs. 

However, city administration found it would require the removal of 6,900 trees and might cause potential harm to the ecosystem. 

"The sound bite of 6,900 trees being removed. Remember that these trees are being replaced," Mark Edwards, the senior director of development at Panattoni Development, told council about the mitigation efforts the company would undertake in relocating the creek. 

"This isn't a net loss, so there's actually a net gain in trees."  

Other council members like Tim Cartmell and Mayor Amarjeet Sohi, who both voted in favour, said they felt satisfied by the mitigation efforts outlined by the business park applicant. 

"We're still a city of 1.2 million people. We still need a significant amount of non-residential development. We still have considerable financial restraints and concerns on our city," Cartmell said. 

"This will actually, with approval of this application, result in a protected space and a well-managed space, which is not necessarily the case if it falls back to the city to take responsibility for."

Sohi expressed apprehension at voting against the application, citing it could be seen as a deterrence to other projects. 

"We have lost a huge amount of industrial growth to the region, and that has put our city in a very difficult financial position, where we are putting such a burden on the residential property owners, because we have lost our share of industrial growth from 74 per cent, to six down to 60 per cent," said Sohi.

"So every incremental decision that comes in front of us to rebalance that back into more industrial growth."  

Other public stakeholders like the Edmonton River Valley Conservation Coalition were staunchly opposed to the application. 

"We're very relieved that this proposal did not pass," Kristine Kowalchuk, coalition chair, told CBC in an interview. 

"This landscape formed over thousands of years, and you can't just replace trees … you can't just replant them and redevelop an ecosystem, a functioning ecosystem, in 10 years," Kowalchuk said noting the land was found to have at least 20 species of birds in an environmental assessment made public as part of the hearing at city hall. 

"We did a site visit just a few days ago to take a look at this creek, and right now, the creek is full of frogs singing. So it's not a heavily degraded land. This is land that is functioning as important habitat and a wildlife corridor today."