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General Construction Updates

darwink said:
Sure, you can do things faster with more inconvenience and more money. You have to think about it from a sub trade/sub sub contractor example.

Imagine you have a required step that needs to be done after step 5 and before step 7. For exclusive full shutdown site access, it requires 24 hours of good weather, and 24 hours on either side to prep everything needed to site, and 24 hours to remove everything from site after. It requires all your crews to concentrate on a single site for those 72 hours.

So, the city builds a tight schedule of 3 weeks for a full shutdown.

What does this mean for the contractor? They have to price in the risk that step 1,2,3,4 and 5 are not completed on time. They have to price in the risk that the weather isn't good. And since they need the full crew, they have to price in the opportunity cost of not doing other work from the first possible day of work, to lets say, 15 days later.

So the city ends up paying for 15 days of a crew to do 3 days of work.

In the alternative scenario, the company is given 2 weeks to complete their work, and a window of 2 months when they can expect to be completing it. They aren't required to show up on a given day, nor are they required to stop other work to surge onto the city project.

Under this scenario, even though it is the same amount of work, the flexibility allows the company to only plan for 3 days worth of total crew time.

So.

Does the city decide to spend 5 times as much to save time? Will the same people then try to kill the project due to cost? Will the higher cost generate more political pain city wide than construction disruptions? Will both contractor capacity and the cost mean the city gets a lot less stuff done despite spending way more?
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Thanks @darwink this was a great walkthrough on the factors involved.
 
Leonard Development Group strikes again! These are the developments I'm most excited about in Marda Loop. Much more than the Co-op proposal or the strip mall across the street.
20240831_200054.jpg
 
shermanator said:
Leonard Development Group strikes again! These are the developments I'm most excited about in Marda Loop. Much more than the Co-op proposal or the strip mall across the street.
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Agreed. I'm excited for the Co-op proposal, but these smaller ones are my favorites. They're 100% wins. The Co-op development will add a lot of people to the area and will probably be a game changer, but these smaller ones are true urban fabric builders with no downsides.
 
Surrealplaces said:
Agreed. I'm excited for the Co-op proposal, but these smaller ones are my favorites. They're 100% wins. The Co-op development will add a lot of people to the area and will probably be a game changer, but these smaller ones are true urban fabric builders with no downsides.
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I wonder how the cost math works out for these Leonard group projects - they seem really big on reusing what is already there, however often are doing some pretty substantial renos as well. I am assuming this scale is cheaper than tearing down and rebuilding everything from scratch? Is there a reason Marda Loop is seeing more of this scale/type of adaptive retail than elsewhere?

Really is a great little set of developments clustering on 34th.
 
CBBarnett said:
I wonder how the cost math works out for these Leonard group projects - they seem really big on reusing what is already there, however often are doing some pretty substantial renos as well. I am assuming this scale is cheaper than tearing down and rebuilding everything from scratch? Is there a reason Marda Loop is seeing more of this scale/type of adaptive retail than elsewhere?

Really is a great little set of developments clustering on 34th.
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Might be some way to change the tax treatment of land banking from passive to active. So the economics might be a bit different than other development schemes.
 
CBBarnett said:
I wonder how the cost math works out for these Leonard group projects - they seem really big on reusing what is already there, however often are doing some pretty substantial renos as well. I am assuming this scale is cheaper than tearing down and rebuilding everything from scratch? Is there a reason Marda Loop is seeing more of this scale/type of adaptive retail than elsewhere?

Really is a great little set of developments clustering on 34th.
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My assumption for the popularity of these in marda loop is that there quite a few small older houses and multi family units along 34th that are already zoned for commercial purposes. There have been quite a few in the area for a while, and leonard is spreading that type of commercial space east.
 
shermanator said:
Leonard Development Group strikes again! These are the developments I'm most excited about in Marda Loop. Much more than the Co-op proposal or the strip mall across the street.View attachment 592824
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These are just such a goldilocks conversion... I wonder how many properties Leonard owns. They should never stop doing these. Seems to make financial sense to them as this is now the third one of these they're doing? Here's the existing streetview.
1725387130229.png
 
Beyond the reasons listed here (relatively cheap and quick to develop, and small retail spaces sized for local businesses), I like these because they have a unique character to them. They are uniquely Marda Loop, which is something that neighbourhood needs after all the demolition and redevelopment.
 
badc0ffee said:
Beyond the reasons listed here (relatively cheap and quick to develop, and small retail spaces sized for local businesses), I like these because they have a unique character to them. They are uniquely Marda Loop, which is something that neighbourhood needs after all the demolition and redevelopment.
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It's a small trend, but Marda Loop is quite weird in this retail conversion thing by Calgary standards.

Here's a streetview from back in 2007, almost 20 years ago(!), notice the whole block had already been converted to retail. I don't know the local history enough to guess when they were first converted but probably a while before that.

I am also curious to understand the unique nature of 33/34 as twin main street type roads, it's pretty unusual. The development of Crowchild, the semi-gating of Upper Mount Royal as a wealthy enclave, the redevelopment of the military base - all played a role here likely. We don't see many of these "which street is the main street?" twin corridor things very often.

1725398846063.png


From 2024, much development and investment, many of the small former residential houses remain:
1725398877879.png


Leonard Group isn't breaking the mold here with their small-scale retail conversions and redevelopment, but is actually evolving and enhancing on an existing established trend in the area. Importantly, this next era of redevelopment has far more diversity of shops and retail offerings - actual food, wine bars, cafes etc. - so there's a both a broadening and deepening of Marda Loop as a retail destination.
 
CBBarnett said:
I wonder how/if much time would be saved if they just fully closed sections and do the whole thing, then reopen as a final product? Granted timing is tricky as there's lots to do above and below grade - but seems to me half the work is shuffling things around to keep a lane open under all circumstances and putting up temporary stuff to just replace it later.

My thinking is more how to minimize people being upset about construction - if people are going to complain regardless, why not go for shorter, full closure rather than dragging things out? Perhaps what I am saying isn't possible or really that much more efficient?
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The main problem is that this really strangles the businesses in and around fully closed sections, depending on the length of the closure. You need to keep blood flowing through the limb to keep it alive, not sure how long you can that flow off.
 
CBBarnett said:
It's a small trend, but Marda Loop is quite weird in this retail conversion thing by Calgary standards.

Here's a streetview from back in 2007, almost 20 years ago(!), notice the whole block had already been converted to retail. I don't know the local history enough to guess when they were first converted but probably a while before that.

I am also curious to understand the unique nature of 33/34 as twin main street type roads, it's pretty unusual. The development of Crowchild, the semi-gating of Upper Mount Royal as a wealthy enclave, the redevelopment of the military base - all played a role here likely. We don't see many of these "which street is the main street?" twin corridor things very often.

View attachment 593548
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34th had commercial first, and it was the street car route until 1948. The trolley bus, and later the diesel bus, went up 33rd instead, and commercial began to develop there also. Why switch the transit to 33rd? I think the idea was that 33rd had better prospects of extending further west to new communities, as 34th would run into the South Calgary reservoir, which is still under Richmond Green.
 
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