{"id":489722,"date":"2026-02-21T10:29:42","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T10:29:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/489722\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T10:29:42","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T10:29:42","slug":"happy-beer-street-becomes-edmontons-newest-entertainment-district-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/489722\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Beer Street becomes Edmonton’s newest entertainment district"},"content":{"rendered":"

An area in Edmonton referred to as Happy Beer Street will be the city\u2019s newest entertainment district after a unanimous city council vote Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Entertainment districts are areas where alcohol can be purchased and consumed from participating businesses within specific boundaries during events. In such cases, these areas are restricted to foot traffic.<\/p>\n

This district, along 78th Avenue between 99th and 100th streets, is the city\u2019s third. The others are on Rice Howard Way<\/a> and a section of 104th Street.<\/p>\n

Cole Boyd, the co-owner of Bent Stick Brewing, told CBC News Thursday the district has been a long time coming.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the concentration of breweries we have got on 78th Avenue, to be able to use it as more of a gathering spot and leverage our proximity and collaboration into something to better the community \u2014 we’re pretty excited about it,\u201d said Boyd.<\/p>\n

Cultivating a vibrant city<\/p>\n

Most community members seem to welcome the district. Of 1,484 respondents of the city\u2019s public engagement survey, 87 per cent indicated support.<\/p>\n

Eleven per cent opposed the change, citing noise, public alcohol consumption, traffic congestion and parking scarcity as concerns.<\/p>\n

Natalie Darrah, a director of local non-profit Paths for People, told the city\u2019s executive committee on Wednesday that the district supports her organization\u2019s \u201cvision of a human-centred, vibrant city.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Edmonton\u2019s local economy director Tom Mansfield said on Wednesday that entertainment districts can reduce red tape. (Submitted by City of Edmonton)<\/p>\n

The area is well-serviced by non-vehicular forms of transportation like public transit, sidewalks and bike lanes, said Darrah.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt makes sense to carry this momentum forward and to take full advantage of this existing community infrastructure to create an active node \u2026 that benefits our local economy and our identity as a city,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

At a city council committee meeting Wednesday, Edmonton\u2019s local economy director Tom Mansfield said entertainment districts can reduce red tape so businesses can host events with ease and more regularly.<\/p>\n

Currently, individual businesses must get a special licence from Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis. Obtaining these licences can involve additional fees and costs and can take up to six weeks to process.<\/p>\n

A separate application is also needed to request temporary street closures from the city.<\/p>\n

This new event-hosting ease will breed collaboration between businesses in the neighbourhood, said Boyd.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s things that we’ve wanted to do before, but were restricted by our use case,\u201d he said. \u201cIf we put live music on the street 1771669781, everyone benefits from it instead of just one brewery.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s going to be a bit of a touch-and-go trial year, but we’re excited. We’ve got good bones in place to make this year’s programming go over well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An area in Edmonton referred to as Happy Beer Street will be the city\u2019s newest entertainment district after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":489723,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[196831,49,48,23752,196828,196829,196830,196832],"class_list":{"0":"post-489722","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edmonton","8":"tag-bent-stick-brewing","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-edmonton","12":"tag-entertainment-district","13":"tag-entertainment-districts","14":"tag-tom-mansfield","15":"tag-vibrant-city"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/489723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}