Council votes to expropriate City Centre Airport land

Edmonton has taken another step towards redeveloping the City Centre Airport into a new neighbourhood.

City Council Wednesday voted in favour of expropriating the property, which includes more than 200 individual landowners.

"The city is moving closer to getting shovels in the ground next year," Coun. Kim Krushell said.

"City council has been dealing with this issue for quite some time," she aded. "We have proceeded with expropriationwithin that is a budget that covers the expropriation costs, and I do not see us reversing any of our decisions since we've been moving in this direction for quite some time."

The city still needs to reach a deal with the province to take over the land it uses to store and maintain its three planes.

Krushell said city council will also have to negotiate a deal with the federal government for three hectares of land the Department of National Defence uses for an armoury.

The plan is to redevelop the 217 hectare site and create environmentally-friendly housing for 30,000 people, including parks, lakes and an LRT station.

Redevelopment of the airport has been been years in the making. In 2009, city council voted to close it in stages. A year later, a group called Envision Edmonton delivered a petition with 92,000 names that opposed the closure, but the petition was rejected.