Really bizarre to me that there's this much trouble building in Victoria Park. Is the Stampede board that dysfunctional?
There's a ton of history here that predates internet development forums.
The Stampede v. Victoria Park redevelopment was a major (by local civic standards) issue for much of the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s - regular articles in the Herald for years and years about the ebbs and flows of debate. It was the rezoning for housing debate of its time, or the Glenmore Landing saga, but went on for decades.
At issue was two broad trends.
First, was the relative decline and stagnation of the inner city. Largely it was stagnant or shirking in population and lack of re-investment was becoming a big issue in many areas. Victoria Park was declining and becoming shabby, poorer and an increasingly forgotten corner of the suburb-obsessed city.
Second, while the inner city stagnated the rapid suburban growth and downtown corporate boosterism became in vogue. This began to displace smaller, more local forms of economic advocacy, resulting in broad reordering of city land uses, infrastructure, politics and development culture. This is where the attitude was born that downtown is a place only for offices, a place for commuters, a place for others to visit usually by car (but not necessarily live) came from.
The Stampede and Olympics rode on this big economic/political wave of suburbanization and downtown reorganization. With endless growth and big city-boosting schemes in vogue, the need for more exhibition space was strong. The Stampede slowly and incrementally started to eat into Victoria Park, replacing housing with more event infrastructure and parking. Who would miss this dilapidated, run down part of Calgary anyways?
So began a very made-in-Calgary version of a slum-clearing urban renewal type scheme, with Stampede and event infrastructure driving the case for renewal.
Problem was Victoria Park wasn’t empty as it is today, it had thousands of people living there and began to hate seeing their neighbourhood encroached by ever expanding event district footprint. The saga played out over a few decades of competing visions for the area, where Stampede pressed for expansion and big scale events, while the community resisted and proposed alternatives developed schemes like high density apartments and social housing. Politics became involved and various plans and proposals came and went over 2 decades.
The end effect was ironically what neither party really wanted. The neighbourhood was slowly dissolved to make way for the Stampede, however it took so long the Stampede's expansion really became obsolete, their expansion plans kind of fizzled out after reaching the current boundaries about 30 years ago ( they for decades wanted all of Victoria Park).
Turns out boosters aren’t good at estimating growth and demand - stampede attendance was plateauing right as this big battle for expansion began. While too late for Victoria Park, after a while general push back was growing that started to question the need for tax-payer funded expansion in the first place, especially when no real clear vision of what makes the expansion so needed can be presented (is lots of more parking lots really the best we can do?)
But as it relates to development - this long story is largely why nothing happened. The interplay between the competing visions for the area and city-endorsed Stampede expansion meant that urban development was iced out. Way easier to build apartments somewhere else without all the drama, politics and risks of being gobbled up by stampede one day. Victoria Park languished, missing the redevelopment boom that saved all the other struggling inner city communities of the 1980s.
The great irony is by trying to do so many big plans and schemes here, we have actually ended up with less of a neighbourhood than we started!
