City of Edmonton still seeking partners to help reimagine Rossdale Power Plant site

City of Edmonton officials took local members of the media on a tour of the Rossdale Power Plant site on Friday as it continues to seek potential developers to get involved in trying to come up with a bold new vision for the area and then bring it to life.

“World's your oyster,” Avril McCalla, the project lead for the city’s River Crossing initiative, told reporters during the walking tour. 

“There's lots of different opportunities here, lots of ways that it can operate with lots of different uses all at the same time.”

The building, which was decommissioned in 2012, sits on the banks of the North Saskatchewan River. Ownership of the plant was transferred from Epcor to the city in 2022. 

The city says it hopes potential partners can help revitalize the plant as a new public gathering space. The city issued a request for information as part of the initiative in the fall and is planning to review submissions in the spring.

As part of the process, the city said it is consulting with Indigenous stakeholders on how to repurpose the plant which has been a prominent landmark in Edmonton for decades.

Papaschase First Nation Chief Calvin Bruneau told CBC News it will be vital to honour the traditional burial grounds by the plant. He said he would like to see signage at the site for the burial grounds. 

“The main concern I have there … is protecting that burial site,” he said. “I see people still walking through there, and a lot of people don't even know about it.” 

Those same concerns were also raised in 2022 as the city was looking into a proposed project that would see a gondola carry passengers from one side of the North Saskatchewan River valley to the other.

Bruneau said he believes any new vision for the Rossdale Power Plant site needs to include Indigenous participation. 

“We want to see our history told,” he said. “We want our ancestors honoured and respected. 

“If there's going to be shops, we'd like to have our Indigenous vendors there and our own archives.”

McCalla said the city is working closely with stakeholders and hopes there are partnerships or Indigenous-led submissions that come in as part of the RIF process. 

“It's not a formal procurement exercise at this stage, but we want to hear from people … what they think they would see here, and how they would start to get there,” she said. 

Since being decommissioned, the Rossdale Power Plant has been used for events such as the 2019 SingularityU Canada Summit, which saw 1,200 people take part in the conference. 

Murtaza Haider, executive director of the Cities Institute at the University of Alberta, told CBC News that he believes the power plant is an underutilized asset of the city’s.

“It presents a tremendous opportunity to develop this site as a destination for Edmontonians, for people to come and be able to use this space differently in summer, and differently in winter,” he said. “It has to be a yearlong entertainment place.”

Haider pointed to how the 2024 Summer Olympics saw the city of Paris leverage its riverfront as part of ceremonies and competitions.

“Keeping it empty, keeping it vacant would serve no purpose,” he said.

Haider said a potential example of how a power plant could be repurposed is the former Rankine Generating Station in Ontario which reopened in 2021 as a museum. 

Haider said he also believes repurposing the power plant and redeveloping the area around it could serve as an opportunity to recognize the historical significance the area has for Indigenous people in the region. 

“There could be a way to leverage the heritage of the place, and at the same time, providing people — new and old Canadians — to come together and spend time there in a way that builds a community.”