1st St Chinatown Tower Development | ?m | 28s | El Condor Lands | Perkins + Will

ByeByeBaby said:
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Good news! Medicine Hat is only a couple hours drive away!
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But where are the streetcars and fedora's!? Plus...those orwellians buildings in the background don't look too 1940's to me. ?
 
gsunnyg said:
I wouldn't necessarily take the downtown from 1945 but rather keep all the historical buildings that we demolished such as the sandstone ones. Id also take smaller roadways and no Plus-15. Those 3 things from 1945 would have definitely helped make our downtown more interesting and vibrant on street level.
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The +15s make winter livable for office workers though!
 
jdixon said:
The +15s make winter livable for office workers though!
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Of course it does but its a luxury not a necessity. Its cool to have but the tradeoff is a more sterile downtown. Imagine all the shops along the plus 15 situated on street level and all those workers having to walk in the streets. Would be an instant boost to vibrancy. I know Toronto and Montreal have their own underground systems but plenty of other winter cities do perfectly fine without such a system. But at the end of the day it was just my personal opinion, everyone has their own preferences where they weigh the pros and cons of such systems.
 
I don't know why there's a massive obsession with making the CBD less sterile. I wouldn't trade the +15s for a more lively proper downtown - what we need to do is build up our more residential areas with stronger main streets. For example, if you look at the area around Bay/Wellington or Bay/King in Toronto, it's super sterile. But a couple blocks over towards Queen street (a proper main street) and you have a bunch of life and lots of things happening.
 
UrbanRED said:
I don't know why there's a massive obsession with making the CBD less sterile. I wouldn't trade the +15s for a more lively proper downtown - what we need to do is build up our more residential areas with stronger main streets. For example, if you look at the area around Bay/Wellington or Bay/King in Toronto, it's super sterile. But a couple blocks over towards Queen street (a proper main street) and you have a bunch of life and lots of things happening.
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I know what you mean. It's the same thing with the CBD of Vancouver, San Fran, LA, even downtown NYC, and parts of midtown. CBDs are by nature dead zones after hours. The problem is that tourists mostly stay in Calgary's CBD, so they think that's all their is for vibrancy. Those other cities mentioned, tourists tend to stay in the trendier areas. If Calgary had more hotels in the Beltline and places like Kensington, nobody wold care much about the CBD. Having two hotels in EV, and the new Marriott in the Beltline is going to help. We really need a couple more decent sized hotels in the Beltline.
We don't need to put all of our energy into reviving a CBD, that isn't designed to be revived, but it wouldn't hurt to improve it.
 
Calgary's office core is comparably huge so it wouldn't hurt to make it more of complete neighbourhood. Now is the time too. There's far too much office space in the city.

I firmly believe the Plus 15 impacts street level potential more than an underground system. You're underground. Who wants to be underground on a nice day. The restaurants and patios are at street level.
 
Toronto's "sterile zone" is basically 2x5 streets (NS: Bay and York, and EW: Richmond, Adelaide, King, Wellington, and Front). Calgary's sterile zone is more like 9x15 streets: the entire downtown minus Stephen Ave and Chinatown.

Bremner Blvd., which was developed over the past 15 years, has above average vibrancy for a CBD. It's probably a good model for what Calgary's CBD could be. The office buildings are all connected by bridges and have internal retail, but they also have external retail and patios. Through a combination of new residential development, retrofitting the bases of existing office buildings, and redesigning the streets around pedestrians and bikes, there's a lot of potential for improvement.

One of the benefits of the office building crash is that we will be mercifully spared from any more sh*t like this (at least for another decade or so).
 
I would add 1st street sw and 8th street sw to the list of lively streets, and the cycle track on 5th seems to be livening up that street as well.... but yeah far too many dead zone streets. Office building renos can definitely help if done right. The Scotia Plaza is the good example, it's just too bad it's Stephen Ave which is already decently vibrant. So far the other office tower podium renos are useless. The renos at 5th and 5th, Fifth Ave Place and BVS make the buildings look a bit nicer, but nothing has changed functionally. Still complete dead zones.

I agree with the potential for improvement, and I think it's slowly going that way, now that the office tower building boom is on hiatus.
Silence&Motion said:
Toronto's "sterile zone" is basically 2x5 streets (NS: Bay and York, and EW: Richmond, Adelaide, King, Wellington, and Front). Calgary's sterile zone is more like 9x15 streets: the entire downtown minus Stephen Ave and Chinatown.

Bremner Blvd., which was developed over the past 15 years, has above average vibrancy for a CBD. It's probably a good model for what Calgary's CBD could be. The office buildings are all connected by bridges and have internal retail, but they also have external retail and patios. Through a combination of new residential development, retrofitting the bases of existing office buildings, and redesigning the streets around pedestrians and bikes, there's a lot of potential for improvement.

One of the benefits of the office building crash is that we will be mercifully spared from any more sh*t like this (at least for another decade or so).
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Fifth Ave Place is a write off. They spent a year renovating the podium, only to come up with something....exactly the same. Not only is the form and function the same, but it doesn't look any different. Can't stand Fifth Ave Place's 4th ave side. A long block of nothing but mirrored glass wall along the sidewalk. ?

Surrealplaces said:
I would add 1st street sw and 8th street sw to the list of lively streets, and the cycle track on 5th seems to be livening up that street as well.... but yeah far too many dead zone streets. Office building renos can definitely help if done right. The Scotia Plaza is the good example, it's just too bad it's Stephen Ave which is already decently vibrant. So far the other office tower podium renos are useless. The renos at 5th and 5th, Fifth Ave Place and BVS make the buildings look a bit nicer, but nothing has changed functionally. Still complete dead zones.

I agree with the potential for improvement, and I think it's slowly going that way, now that the office tower building boom is on hiatus.
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