For the Love of Winter: Strategy to Make the Most of Winter Released

October 18, 2012

Edmontonians dedicated to making winter one of Edmonton's biggest assets have released a strategy for unlocking the potential of our city’s winter season. 

For the Love of Winter: Strategy for Transforming Edmonton into a World-Leading Winter City includes 10 goals under the themes of winter life, design, economy and our winter story. It recommends initiatives such as placing warming huts in the river valley, making free and low-cost skates and skis available, designing buildings so they block wind and capture sunlight, and promoting businesses linked to winter.

“We have such opportunity at our doorsteps,” said Edmonton City Councillor and WinterCity Think Tank Co-Chair Ben Henderson. “We already have popular winter festivals. We can skate, ski, snowshoe, toboggan, or walk through beautiful winter landscapes – again – right outside our doors.

“For the Love of Winter celebrates our northerness,” Henderson added.  “The strategy is a call to action for making the most of all winter has to offer, socially and economically. It will create a city that embraces winter so that Edmonton is known around the world as a great place to live and visit during the winter months.”

“Edmonton is a city with so many undiscovered opportunities for people to sink their snow boards, skis, skates and boots into,” said Jim Barr, CEO and founder of Snow Seekers. “We need to embrace the opportunities that exist in Edmonton for a winter experience that really allows people to get the most of what is usually thought of as the dark days of winter.”

For the Love of Winter is the result of a year-long conversation between residents, the business community, urban planners and visitors about what would make them fall in love with winter in Edmonton. A WinterCity Think Tank of 35 community members used this input, considered best practices of successful northern cities and gathered advice from local and international winter experts to develop the strategy.

To help illustrate the winter city they envision, members of the WinterCity Think Tank gathered at temporary winter patios and fire pits set up on 104 Street north of Jasper Avenue.

For the Love of Winter: Strategy for Transforming Edmonton into a World-Leading Winter City is scheduled to be presented to the Community Services Committee of City Council on October 23, 2012. 

 

For more information:

Susan Holdsworth

Title	WinterCity Strategy Project Manager
Telephone	780-496-3664