Western Boom Town

Edmonton's Mayor William Hawrelak boasts that his city's brand-new $3,500,000 city hall owns two proud distinctions: clean-lined design and architectural refinements stamp it as "North America's most modern city hall"--and it is paid for. Last week city employees moved their files out of the old red brick warehouse that has housed city offices "temporarily" since 1913, and into their new steel, stone, and glass administration center.

Most Edmonton people cheerfully credit the construction of the new city hall to the financial acumen and persuasiveness of Mayor Hawrelak. Inheriting a $1,500,000 building fund when he took office five years ago, he fattened it from such civic windfalls as the $647,000 plum gained from a favorable turn of the exchange rate on borrowed U.S. dollars. By the time Hawrelak persuaded his fellow citizens to forgo other desperately needed civic improvements to start the city hall, he had the cash in sight to pay for it.

The new city hall makes a striking addition to Edmonton's fast-climbing skyline. Riding a surge of prosperity that began when U.S. servicemen poured north in World War II to man the land route to Alaska and the air route to the Soviet Union, the city tapped a far richer bonanza in the oil boom that blew in ten years ago and gets bigger every year.

Edmonton's population has doubled since 1947 (to 248,000), retail sales climbed 10% last year, and local boosters counted 13 major building projects started in 1956 alone. Among them: a $6,000,000 federal office building, two new $1,000,000 banks, a $2,000,000 office building for Imperial Oil Ltd., and four other office buildings of six to eleven stories. A record-shattering housing boom thrust new residential suburbs out into the prairies faster than streets and sidewalks could be built to serve them. Power lines, sewers, bus routes are growing, but never quite fast enough to keep up with the demand. It takes a year to get a new telephone. But, grins Mayor Hawrelak, this is a major improvement--it used to take three years.

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