With all of the new developments happening on 16 Ave N and Macleod Trail recently, it is becoming increasingly important for the City of Calgary to create and complete well-thought out Streetscape Master Plans for these areas. Not only for the developments that are in the pipeline now, but to create a condition for better redevelopment sooner. There is a lot of under-utilized land along these corridors and we are going to see sustained and increasing pressure for redeveloping these lots moving forward. Mobility connections and designs are being done ad hoc at the Development Permit stage and I would suggest we need a plan for these interfaces now so that builders can build to the ultimate expected condition and to ensure good development outcomes, consistently on these main streets.
The Broadway Plan in Vancouver shows what the expectations are for how development interfaces with the street:
https://guidelines.vancouver.ca/policy-plan-broadway-public-realm.pdf
We need these details to ensure good or even intentional urban design outcomes for redevelopment projects happen and that the current mobility conditions and objectives don't kill the street-orientation of developments and in particular CRU's.
It'll become pretty clear why when the CRU's occupy at the 16 Ave Co-op redevelopment and the "street-fronting" shops orient there front doors away from 16 Ave towards the parking lot:
This condition happens basically everywhere in the City where mobility focusses on car throughput of the adjacent street and forces front doors to orient towards the back even though the Land Use Bylaw is trying to get commercial units to face the street. This happens in the majority of situations to be honest:
and the outcome:
and again street-fronting buildings:
oh i guess not:
Here's what you'll get for "Main Street" redevelopment if mobility issues and a streetscape design aren't created:
Not exactly a suitable outcome for how buildings should interact with a main street:
I really hope that we can create good streetscape plans so that redevelopment can orient towards main streets and the street correctly, instead of ad hoc outcomes at Development Permit creating final conditions that we won't look favourably at, which is happening all the time right now. I use Bowness Road where the main street improvements have been made and walked the 33 Ave improvements and kudos to the City teams (likely a lot from Mobility Eng who i've been critical of) that have worked on those they did a good job and all i'm asking is for more of it and sooner. Provisions for off-peak street parking are necessary for all main streets no matter the current size and throughput, and i don't believe these should be staged as short, medium and long term as they are with the 16 Ave NW planned improvements. Create a design and build to the final condition (read: the long term condition) so that developers and builders can put it in at the time of development as the final intended design should be. But we need a good design to build to, and if we do that builders and the City of Calgary can create the outcomes we all hope for. There are way too many times that the short or medium term plans are what are half realized and the long term plan never comes to fruition. So just plan for the final, optimal condition of the main street interface and let it play out and develop that way.
