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Urban Development and Proposals Discussion

There was discussion in another thread regarding parking how many empty lots we still have remaining downtown. Still some to go, but I feel good about the progress we've made since 1971.

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Surrealplaces said:
There was discussion in another thread regarding parking how many empty lots we still have remaining downtown. Still some to go, but I feel good about the progress we've made since 1971.

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Great photo there. I always assumed Calgary tore down a bunch of nice old downtown neighbourhoods but it looks like the downtown core was quite small when high quality, pretty and walkable streets were the norm. Also cool to see the lack of access to beltline.
 
Rusteez42 said:
Great photo there. I always assumed Calgary tore down a bunch of nice old downtown neighbourhoods but it looks like the downtown core was quite small when high quality, pretty and walkable streets were the norm. Also cool to see the lack of access to beltline.
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You can kind of see 4 separate zones:

- Beltline with it's tree lined streets
- warehouse distrct along the tracks
- downtown commercial core
- Eau Claire

Today everything is blending together, and we're really not that far from having one large busy downtown that's more or less filled in. It feels like the heavy lifting has been done, and we need to keep focusing on improving the public realm.
 
Rusteez42 said:
Great photo there. I always assumed Calgary tore down a bunch of nice old downtown neighbourhoods but it looks like the downtown core was quite small when high quality, pretty and walkable streets were the norm. Also cool to see the lack of access to beltline.
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Even a hundred years ago, Calgary's oldest neighbourhoods were primarily and overwhelmingly composed of single family homes. Calgary never had the population density pre-automobile to justify lots of dense inner-city housing, like Montreal, Toronto, or even Ottawa. If you look at an aerial view of downtown you see that what is now empty parking lots and office towers was mostly single family houses:

1773677188747.png


The main old neighbourhoods that Calgary demolished were in the downtown core, East Village, and Victoria Park. But those areas weren't much older and likely wouldn't have looked much different than Inglewood, Kensington, or Bridgeland today. I think the real shame is the loss of many of the older commercial buildings on the east end of Downtown, where the Calgary Tower, Banker's Hall, etc. are today.
 
Surrealplaces said:
I'm sure renovating the Bay building would cost a lot of money, but I'm sure there are options that would allow it to be cheaply done. It's an old building, but until the Bay's bankrupcty, it was still a functioning department store.

Maybe there's an option to keep it as is and turn it into an 'Art Central' type building? Maybe another option is gutting the interior and turning it into warehouse type loft space?

I'm not an architectural expert, but I'm confident there are solutions that won't cost 100's of millions, they might be simple ones, but they'd be better than a tear down.
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There's also a bunch of these similar buildings all around the country. So far, there's been no plans announced for any of them. The main successful reuse of these large floor plate buildings was The Post in Vancouver, but office demand is obviously way, way down. Residential conversion will be quite expensive with this space.

Maybe we'll get a downtown Costco/IKEA combo. Those seem to be the only large retailers left these days and require little HVAC and finishings. Calgary could use another Ikea and there seems to be unlimited demand for Costcos.
 
trtcttc said:
There's also a bunch of these similar buildings all around the country. So far, there's been no plans announced for any of them. The main successful reuse of these large floor plate buildings was The Post in Vancouver, but office demand is obviously way, way down. Residential conversion will be quite expensive with this space.

Maybe we'll get a downtown Costco/IKEA combo. Those seem to be the only large retailers left these days and require little HVAC and finishings. Calgary could use another Ikea and there seems to be unlimited demand for Costcos.
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Winnipeg's downtown Hudson's Bay has plans from the local indigenous people to redo and use the building.
 
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