Sprucing Up

Destination: Spruce Grove

by Scott Messenger

If you’re travelling the Yellowhead Highway (a.k.a. Highway 16) about 30 kilometres west of Edmonton, you can pass Spruce Grove, tucked behind a golf course and a few stands of trees, and not realize the extent of what’s there. While most of Alberta’s communities maintain a comfortable distance from the province’s major roads, this capital region city’s inconspicuousness is remarkable. More than 20,000 people live here.

Visibility isn’t a problem along the Yellowhead’s sister route, the 16A that runs parallel to the south. That highway cuts through part of the city characterized by the hurried roadside development particular to many Alberta prairie communities. Grain terminals anchor one side; a sprawling strip of mostly retail outlets makes up the other. If you’ve got business elsewhere, you stop out of need rather than interest or want. Add that to the fact that roughly 11,000 more vehicles travel the Yellowhead on a daily basis, and that underdeveloped, prettier north face seems a missed opportunity.

That’s about to change. Late last fall, city council approved the borrowing of $8.9 million for land assembly for the Gateway Town Centre to be located along the Yellowhead Highway. According to early proposals, the mixed-use project – an “urban village” component of a larger residential development to come – will ultimately feature as many as 150 townhouses, up to 250,000 and 50,000 square feet of retail and office space, respectively, and perhaps even a 125-room hotel. It will be pedestrian-friendly and, in providing a little more public space, complement the downtown core around Spruce Grove’s austere City Hall. That area, like many Alberta community cores, is the subject of revitalization strategies the city hopes to set in motion over the next two years.

Currently, the area set aside for the project is part of roughly 100 undeveloped acres where coyotes still prowl within easy sniffing distance of the new cookie-cutter subdivisions on the city’s northern fringe. Just how close the project will ultimately come to its developer’s build-out vision naturally depends on the economy and municipal will. One factor working in Spruce Grove’s favour, however, is population growth of roughly 30% since 2001. Playing into that, no doubt, is the city’s inviting, small-town atmosphere – a holdover of its start as a French and Scottish farming settlement in the late 1800s. As a more obvious contributor to growth, and specifically to economic diversification, Acheson Industrial Area continues to develop nearby in Parkland County, as do the five industrial parks within city limits.

But the city also has a track record of forward-thinking. Gateway Town Centre itself is an exercise in sustainability, economically and, given the density it will support, environmentally, and it’s in keeping with Spruce Grove’s focus on the future. Sustainable Spruce Grove, a document released in late 2008 and meant as an economic, social and environmental framework for long-term planning, and a Sustainable Development Charter are both clear evidence of noble intention.

To follow up on that intention, Spruce Grove has held itself accountable since 2003 as one of 15 Alberta municipalities pursuing emissions reductions through the Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ Partners in Climate Change Program (a joint project with ICLEI, an international network of local governments committed to sustainable development). More recently, the city declared its commitment in the Climate Change Catalogue, an international record of environmental efforts of communities that was created for last December’s Cop15 talks in Copenhagen. Choosing its baseline year of 1996, the city set a relatively lofty goal: cut municipal greenhouse gas output by 20% by 2013.

For a city of its size, Spruce Grove is proving itself a regional leader. Soon enough, it’s going to be tough to overlook.

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