Riverside Parks Planning

Thank-you for your inquiry.  The City of St. Albert currently defaults to sand surfacing within most of its Community Parks; we would typically apply a rubberized surface only in larger City Parks, or locations that have unique features.  The City of St. Albert will be reviewing its service standards as it relates to accessibility of playgrounds, and will share any updated standards within our Parks and Open Spaces Standards and Guidelines on stalbert.ca once complete.

Regards, Keith. 

Thank you for your input.  We are assessing what can be provided based on the feedback received and what can be sustainably provided on the site based on the size, construction and ongoing maintenance costs and compatibility with a future school.

Riverside Park, while meeting the City's minimum requirements for school sites, is significantly smaller than parks adjacent to schools found in older neighbourhoods within St. Albert.  Riverside Park is approximately 2 hectares whereas (for comparison) Grovesnor Park is over 9 hectares.  Comparable existing sites would include Everitt Park adjacent to Lois E. Hole School and Joyal Park adjacent to Sister Alphonse and Joesph Demko. 

Ski trails are not a currently a service level provided by the City. The Nordic Ski Club grooms Kingswood Park through an agreement with the City. The City does not have the necessary staff or equipment to directly provide ski trails. 

Thank you for the question!  The school site noted is a preliminary plan only, and is guided by the school site size requirements of the City's Parks and Open Spaces Standards and Guidelines. It is sized to accommodate the needs of schools for grades between kindergarten and grade 9, including bus lanes, parking lots, school footprint and a small amount of recreation amenities (playground, tarmac area, jump pit etc.).  The school site at Riverside Park is 1.8ha, comparable new school sites in the City include Lois E. Hole (~1.5ha), Joseph Demko School (~1.9ha) and Sister Alphonse (~1.2ha). All St. Albert school boards have received the park plan and we received no comments or concerns from them. 

The developer does not get involved in school sites beyond the provision of the land as per the City's guidelines and servicing to the property.  The City and School Boards work collaboratively though the school site allocation committee to determine future land needs for schools on an ongoing basis.  When a school board had demonstrated need for additional school(s) to the provincial government and funding committed by Alberta Infrastructure, a site is allocated through the committee and site planning begins.  Site planning is led by Alberta Infrastructure, with support from the school board and City though the development approval process.  At this time, there are no plans identified nor funding approved for a school in Riverside. 

Please do not hesitate to let us know if you have any follow up questions.  

Thank you for the question and we appreciate your patience. The detailed What We Heard report for the public engagement, including the online event, survey and other website tools, along with the updated Riverside Park Master Plan are going through final reviews. We will post them on this website and share through social media and other channels as soon as possible.  You can also receive an update if you click Subscribe under the "Stay Informed" button on the bottom right of this webpage. 

The minimum standards for school sites are in place to ensure there is adequate park space to meet community needs.  It is important to note that while the school sites themselves are not as large as in some older neighbourhoods, there is still the required amount of park space within the neighbourhood.  The park space is however more evenly distributed throughout the neighbourhood and not centered on one large site.  In addition, in Riverside, over 9ha of park space (or approximately half of the required municipal reserve) is dedicated to the Grey Nuns White Spruce Park, which will provide recreation and education opportunities for all residents. Although not a traditional manicured park, there are picnic areas, a nature investigation play area and multiple kilometers of trails planned for residents to enjoy. 

We will determine that in consultation with Genstar Developments. There is a significant amount of remediation work required on the school site portion that is planned for 2022. Once the remediation has occurred, the site will be graded and mostly likely seeded to grass until a school is built. As in other school sites that do not yet have a school building, the City will maintain the grass once the developer has received their Final Acceptance Certificate (FAC). 

Thank you for the idea! We are open to options to enhance winter use of our parks. Your input has been recorded and will be considered as we move towards a final concept for this site. 

Thank you for your input.  We appreciate hearing your concerns on the proposed toboggan hill design and will make adjustments based on the feedback received.  We do look for cost-effective opportunities to provide amenities in parks that encourage four season use but this may be not be the right fit for the site. We do encourage you to  share your comments via the survey available on this webpage as well.  

Thank you for your input!  We have recorded your comment but would encourage you to complete the survey as well.  Design options for CP2 will be reviewed and adjusted before finalizing based on the feedback we have received. 

Thank you for your input!  We will include your suggestion in our analysis but please also complete the survey if you haven't already.