The Cloverdale Footbridge will be torn down next month as planned after a judge denied a last-ditch effort to save the popular pedestrian bridge.
A group called Save Edmonton’s Downtown Footbridge was seeking an injunction in Court of Queen’s Bench to halt the demolition of the bridge, which crosses the North Saskatchewan River.
The group cited an old agreement signed by the city and the province in the 1970s. The group said the agreement requires the city to get the province’s approval to tear down the bridge.
READ MORE: Group seeks court injunction against Valley Line LRT after footbridge closure
On Wednesday morning, a judge denied the group’s request for the injunction, saying even though the agreement between city and province has never been cancelled, there is implied consent to break the agreement because the province put major money into the project. The judge said the footbridge is going to be replaced with a “bigger and better” bridge.
“We’re naturally quite disappointed that the judge didn’t grant an injunction,” Eric Gormley, a member of the Save Edmonton’s Downtown Footbridge group, said. “However, we’re a little bit heartened by the fact that he said that the 1975 agreement between the province and the city, as far as he could see, is still in force.
“That gives us a little bit of encouragement that maybe the province might step up. I have my doubts that they’ll step up in this particular case, but that agreement is still enforced and maybe future development of the river valley, they’ll have to contend with that agreement.”
Watch below: Cloverdale Footbridge group takes city to court, filed by Tom Vernon on Aug. 1, 2016
Quinn Nicholson, public communications specialist with the Valley Line project, gave credit to the group for finding the legislation and doing its due diligence. He said the city will continue to look into the agreement from a legal standpoint but said it will not delay construction on the LRT line.
“Ultimately I don’t think it matters that much. It’s a technicality we’ll work out in partnership with the government of Alberta,” Nicholson said.
“The province still plays a very strong role in terms of oversight and monitoring, but the sense of, ‘you have to go to them for permission to do everything or final authority on everything’ isn’t really the case nowadays.
“I just think we’ve done full due diligence on this project. It’s time to move on now and get it built and get service to southeast Edmonton and the other Edmontonians along the line who have been waiting for this for almost 30 years.”
READ MORE: Residents protest replacement of Cloverdale Footbridge
Gormley said the group isn’t totally giving up; it can still alert city council and the minister of environment that the 1975 agreement is still in place and that it’s important for them to get involved in the river valley parks system.
“We’ve tried many, many angles and we’ve been at this for over three years now and we really have never stopped trying to save the footbridge parks area and I don’t think we’re going to give up at this point.”
The Cloverdale Footbridge will be torn down to make way for a new Valley Line LRT bridge. Once completed, the new LRT bridge will also allow for pedestrian traffic.
Construction on the new LRT line, which will bring passengers from southeast Edmonton to the downtown core, began in April.
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