A plan to develop a sustainable community on the grounds of the City Centre Airport was first approved by city council in 2009, when it voted to close the airport in phases.[1] The community was named Blatchford in 2012, to honour Kenneth Blatchford, who helped to establish Blatchford Field (later the City Centre Airport) in 1926, when he was Mayor of Edmonton.^[7]

In 2011, Edmonton awarded a contract to architects Perkins + Will to design the community.^[8] However, the city scaled back the resulting plan when council gave it final approval in 2014.^[9] A proposed pneumatic waste collection system, and a biomass and geothermal energy system, were scratched from the plans in order to cut costs.^[9] Instead of geothermal and biomass energy, the city chose to utilize a district energy sharing system, which provides renewable heating and cooling to all buildings in Blatchford.^[3] Because of these changes, the city plans to make a profit of $45 million from developing Blatchford, rather than losing $280 million as it would have under the original plans.^[10]

Ground was broken on the project in 2015, as the city began work on underground utilities.^[11] As the project's developer, the city was responsible for installing roads, pipes, wires, and other core infrastructure for the community.^[12] In 2016, when residents were originally expected to move in at the earliest, the city acknowledged that the project was facing delays; in-part due to uncertainty surrounding the type of district energy sharing system that would be implemented.^[12] That year, council voted to delay the project by a year to resolve questions surrounding the energy sharing system, and to lobby the provincial and federal governments for funding.^[13] In 2019, the first plots of land in phase one were sold to four developers, with the first developer breaking ground in September, 2019.^[14] Energy Centre One, the first phase of the district energy sharing system, went online in November, 2019.^[3] The first residents moved into Blatchford in November 2020.^[15]

Residential development is earmarked for Blatchford West (which includes phase one of the development), and Blatchford East.^[16] Commercial development will be concentrated in Blatchford Market, there will be a large central park called Blatchford Park, and a civic plaza will be constructed around Energy Centre One.^[17] Two LRT stops in Blatchford will open in 2024-2025, as part of the extension of the Metro Line: One stop will be between the community's town centre and the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, and the other stop will be located in northeast Blatchford.^[4]

Blatchford features a district energy sharing system, which provides renewable heating and cooling to all buildings in the community.^[3] Phase one of the system, Energy Centre One, was constructed at a cost of $19.4 million.^[3] It went online in November 2019, and utilizes a geo-exchange field.^[3] The next phase will utilize sewer heat exchange using existing sewage infrastructure.^[3] Edmonton predicts that completing the next stages of the utility will require an investment of $93 million over a period of 10-15 years, and it will cost $660 million over a period of 50 years.^[3][18] In total, it is expected to reduce energy consumption in Blatchford by 15-20%.^[19]

Blatchford requires its builders to follow "green building codes", which it claims will make its homes up to 37% more energy efficient than what is required in provincial building codes.^[20] The community incorporates natural storm water retention methods, such as storm ponds and rain gardens, to take pressure off of its drainage infrastructure and improve water quality.^[20] Blatchford will also include urban agriculture such as community gardens and fruit tree orchards, and naturalized landscapes, including wetlands and bioswales.^[20]

Blatchford faced opposition even before it was approved; a group called "Envision Edmonton" organized numerous initiatives to lobby against the City Centre Airport's closure.^[1] Envision Edmonton, and other critics of the proposal, circulated a petition which garnered over 70,000 signatures, organized protests, and supported pro-airport candidates in Edmonton's 2010 municipal election.^[21][1] The petition, which would have forced a municipal plebiscite on the fate of the airport, was found to fall below the requirements because less than 10% of Edmontonians signed it, and it was not filed within 60 days of city council's decision to close the airport.^[21] The petition contained approximately 100,000 signatures when it was filed, but city staff determined that almost 30,000 of them did not belong to eligible electors.^[21]

Perkins + Will, the firm which created the original design for Blatchford, criticized the city for scaling back sustainable features when the project was approved in 2014.^[10] They argued that the plan was made inferior by removing features such as geothermal energy and pneumatic waste collection, and that it fell short of its original goals.^[10] They further criticized the city for forcing them to defend their work at such a late stage of the planning phase.^[10]

Blatchford has faced criticisms from local developers who fear that the local condo market cannot support such a major development.^[18] Councillor Tim Cartmell echoed these concerns at a 2019 council meeting, arguing that low demand at Blatchford meant that the community could not support an expensive district energy sharing system.^[18]

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