After City of Edmonton staff awarded a kitchen contract at Victoria Golf Course to a multi-national corporation, Councillor Scott McKeen sees what he considers a bad decision and wants to make the best of it.
He confirmed to reporters on Wednesday that he’ll ask for some sort of formal report at city council to take advantage of numerous commercial kitchens connected to City of Edmonton facilities.
One venue McKeen spoke about was Commonwealth Stadium, which is probably available 350 days a year. McKeen say he sees no reason why local chefs, the NAIT culinary program and other initiatives like Fresh can’t create something.
“There’s a number of groups that are coalescing around the local food scene.”
Local restraunteur Brad Lazaranko’s Dogwood Cafe is out, and publicly traded Civeo is in at Victoria.
“I don’t blame administration here,” McKeen said. “I have to take a little bit of personal blame here, because Brad and I talked about this about a year ago. I wish I would have done an inquiry then. It might have prevented this.
“We dropped the ball there. I think we dropped the ball in a number of ways on this one frankly, but by the time the political level found out, it was too late.”
McKeen sees the golf course as being like a river valley chalet in the off season, and regrets that the request for proposal (RFP) from the administration wasn’t thinking more on a grander scale when it was put together.
Global News reached out to Brad Lazaranko who did not want to comment on the story.