Stadium Yards connects history with community
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'You're not downtown but you're downtown adjacent, and you're downtown accessible — because of the LRT you can be immediately downtown,' said Russell Dauk, the Rohit Group of Companies' executive vice-president, income producing properties, about its Stadium Yards development, which is nearly two-thirds complete.
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The Cromdale neighbourhood, east of the city's downtown core, hosts what Rohit calls a transformative, transit-oriented urban village. The seven-acre site, adjacent to Commonwealth Stadium, is also a flagship infill redevelopment, according to Dauk, and is designed to be a walkable, inclusive and vibrant community.
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When Stadium Yards' three phases are finished — the design stage of the third and final phase is set to begin this summer and plans are tentatively to break ground next year — the neighbourhood will be home to more than 1,000 residential units and possibly even as high as 1,400 units. That will mean some 2,000 people will be calling it home, potentially boosting the area's population numbers into the 5,000-person range.
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'The launch of Lewis Block marks a major milestone in the evolution of Stadium Yards — a bold, connected community in the heart of Edmonton,' said Dauk. 'We're especially proud to honour Joseph Lewis through The Steersman sculpture, celebrating a legacy of courage, resilience and the values that continue to guide this development and the city around it.'
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The sculpture, the frame of a striking, red, 21-foot-long canoe with a black steel silhouette of Joseph Lewis, titled The Steersman, is designed to portray symbols of strength, freedom and perseverance — values that Lewis embodied long before the abolition of slavery, officials said.
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Lewis is one of Edmonton's earliest documented Black fur traders and was a skilled steersman with the Hudson's Bay Company in the early 1800s. He is believed to have lived as a free Black man decades before slavery was abolished.
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'When I heard the story of Joseph Lewis being the first Black fur trader here in the city and making his way up to being a steersman, which is a prestigious position on the boat … I just knew in my mind what I wanted to see here,' said local artist and sculptor Slavo Cech, commissioned by the Rohit Group to create the art installation.
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Positioned so the open canoe lets viewers see the Lewis Block buildings behind it, and even a glimpse of Commonwealth Stadium, Cech added that the viewer's eye will add in whatever they feel should be there, perhaps even the water the canoe would be moving on.
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The Lewis Block
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The Lewis Block was close to completion as The Steersman was unveiled; complete enough for its first tenants to move in.
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