With this project and the other two nearby, 14th Street is getting further into that blurry zone many inner city Calgary main streets have found themselves in - is the purpose of this street to access local residents and businesses? Or is the purpose to be a car sewer for rush-hour traffic? The Beltline stretch of 14th is turning far more urban and pedestrian heavy with developments like this occurring all around the corridor here.
14th Street has for so long been the "natural" barrier between high-urban and semi-urban/suburban densities. It has so much weirdness due to a century of tension of it's role:
- A cornucopia of street typologies:
- suburban arterial (N of John Laurie)
- to urban residential street (John Laurie to 20 Ave B)
- to the bizarre quasi-freeway stretch near SAIT (20 Ave to 8 Ave N)
- back to urban street (8 Ave to Kensington Road)
- back to quasi-freeway (Kensington Road to 10th Ave S),
- back to urban street again (S of 10 Ave S)
- Weird 1-sided retailed stretch about 23 Ave S to 33 Ave S, thanks to a strange limited-access gated-community design into and out of Upper Mount Royal.
- Total mish-mash of land uses - loads of gas stations and drive-thrus, but all higher density walkable towers and some pedestrian-oriented retail clusters
- Weird one-off lay-bys (NE corner of 14 / 17 Ave S intersection; all sorts of bizarre bus bays inside the 14 Street / 9 Ave intersection etc)
- Random one-off turning slip lanes (5 Ave N)
- Of course, completely random sidewalk width and quality - most of it terrible.
The street has such a rich history of one-off designs and projects. Will be interesting to watch these towers integrate into the madness. Hopefully this added population and density leads to a push to clear up 14 Street's role for the Beltline stretch at least.
