Heritage Festival moving to Borden Park, Exhibition Lands for 3 years due to Hawrelak Park closure
Albertans seeking music, dancing, displays and food from cultures around the world will have to travel to a new venue in Edmonton for the next three years.
The Edmonton Heritage Festival Association announced Thursday its board of directors has decided on the city’s Exhibition Lands and Borden Park as the temporary site for the Heritage Festival in 2023, ’24 and ’25, with a planned return to Hawrelak Park in 2026.
The move is required because the City of Edmonton is closing Hawrelak for three years in order to carry out an extensive rehabilitation project at the park in the North Saskatchewan River Valley.
The festival said venue change comes with a number of expectations of the city, including a memorandum of understanding guaranteeing a right to return to Hawrelak Park, an agreement about incremental cost coverage and improvements to the site’s egress.
The move comes as the beloved festival reaches a significant milestone.
“We look forward to celebrating our 50th anniversary in our temporary home with our partners in Edmonton’s cultural communities and with our new site partners at Explore Edmonton and the City of Edmonton,” said Robert Rohatyn, president of the Edmonton Heritage Festival Association.
The Exhibition Lands (formerly Northlands) and Borden Park sit beside each other in central Edmonton, near 112 Avenue between 79 Street and Wayne Gretzky Drive.
Each summer, the Heritage Festival features more than 100 cultural groups who share crafts, 600 cultural dishes, and 900 shows on 40 stages over the August long weekend. Hundreds of thousands of people from not just Edmonton, but around Alberta, attend it.
It’s not yet known if the scale of the event will change as a result of the new venue.
The planned closure of Hawrelak Park has been years in the making.
Most of the infrastructure is original to the park since its opening in 1967, and has exceeded its lifespan.
The project will address the utilities, transportation, open spaces and facility infrastructure throughout the entire park. A large part of the work: digging up and replacing underground lines and pipes.
The city is replacing the entire storm sewer, irrigation and water systems and upgrading power, gas and telecommunications. It is also expanding water service to provide fire coverage at several places of the park.
The main pavilion structure and plaza will see updates to finishes, fixtures, skate flooring, commercial kitchen, mechanical and electrical systems and adding gender-neutral washrooms. Other buildings will see similar work.
The Heritage Amphitheatre will also see several changes: new outdoor seating and finishes as well as lighting, structural, mechanical and electrical upgrades, along with adding family/gender-neutral washrooms and more storage. The green room and back of house access will also be reconfigured.
In the park’s open spaces, the playground and paddle boat dock will be replaced. The city is adding more lighting, bicycle parking and more shared-use paths connecting amenities, and repaving all roads.
The city said it will also dredge the sediment from the bottom of the lake.
When the city was deciding on how to go about the work, it was faced with a choice: keep parts of the park open while carrying out the work over the course of a decade, or shut it completely and get it done in three years.
The city chose the latter because it was the safest and most cost-effective route, despite opposition from events like the Heritage Festival.
Construction activities will be located throughout the park as a result of the vast network of underground utilities, facilities, roads and pathways.
The city said underground utility replacement will be disruptive and would have created safety concerns if any portions of the park were to remain open.
The work will require large machinery and a significant amount of space to undertake the trench and backfill activities which will occur.
The closure will begin after the 2023 Silver Skate Festival, sometime in the spring.
The exact date will be established once funding is approved as part of the budget deliberations that will begin at city hall later this month.
The city said the river valley trail system around the perimeter of the park will remain open although occasionally, short-term detours of trails may be necessary.
Construction is expected to begin next spring and conclude sometime in 2025, allowing the park to reopen for winter events that year.
by Global News
