I've read most of the City documents, and I think it's a complicated subject.
The most successful TOD redevelopment sites in Calgary have built off existing commercial areas and communities -- mid-density intensification off inner city communities at Bridgeland and Sunnyside, high rise off of commercial areas at Brentwood especially but also a little at Dalhousie, Lions Park and Heritage. And some of these are a pretty loose definition of 'successful', to be honest. But the industrial area sites without commercial, like 39th Ave and Barlow Max Bell have sat unbothered by even a faint prospect of redevelopment for 40 years now.
TOD benefits from a critical mass; a coffee shop wants to locate somewhere with people living nearby and a prospective apartment dweller wants to live somewhere with a coffee shop, grocery store, etc. A couple of apartment buildings aren't enough to establish a thriving business, and without those local businesses the apartments are much less appealing. And the existing TOD sites help show this -- the ones with the most development (Bridgeland and Sunnyside) are the ones with the best community amenities already in place. The one successful mostly-from-scratch intensification, the East Village, had the benefit of the City through CMLC establishing that this area was going to go, getting a bunch of infrastructure and amenities and promotion put in to get developers happening. (It seems the University District might do something similar through a different institutional land owner; too bad about the lack of transit.) Right now, there are a lot more TOD potential sites in need of amenities than are being developed; adding another to the list won't help.
And it's not a great site. For one thing, this site is not fully serviced -- it's serviced to the capacity of a low density industrial area, but would need upgrades to support high density residential/mixed use development. It's also an isolated site in many ways; on the west is a 250m wide strip of low-density commercial strip mall development with Macleod Trail in the middle between it and Kingsland; on the east before you get to the residents of Fairview is 200+ meters of light industrial land once you cross the CP rail -- which this developer does not have permission to do at this point. (Without a CP crossing, to get to this station from Fairview, the shortest path involves either literally walking through the Chinook LRT station or within 250m of Heritage LRT.)
The rendering and phasing plan also shows density increasing to the north.This is backwards -- the proposed station is at the south, the entire area is swaddled in low-density commercial land so there's no concerns about shadowing, the densest buildings should be closest to the station. It also suggests potentially a bait and switch approach; get the station built and the first few buildings built; it's not like the LRT will skip the station if the promised density doesn't get built on the north end. This is the same lesson as the Bow south block; once the office was built, the cultural and heritage building can be left in renderings and storage yards, having accomplished the goal of getting approval.
The fact that the plan is for 25 years of development doesn't help -- if they said the whole thing was going in one shot, four years start to finish, then I'd believe businesses might locate there, and I'd be much more supportive. But the plan is really to build two apartment towers right away; what sort of commercial development will set up, knowing it's a 10+ year wait for 80% of their customer base? And if they stop after the first phase, which they could (even with the best of intentions, business happens) -- would anybody here argue for adding a train stop and slowing down the LRT and reducing transit service for the sake of a few apartment buildings? Especially ones that -- from the example render -- seem to be built on top of multistory car parking? Forgive me if I don't have a ton of faith.
Fundamentally, it's not actually all that great a site. The other two infill LRT locations (Northland and 50th Ave S) are both better - Northland has a single owner, and an existing commercial area; 50th Ave has usable land all around the station, and is closer to a larger existing population base. Not to mention the couple of dozen existing LRT sites that are better for TOD by virtue of having T already built and being serviced.
The market for TOD construction will be cannibalized by adding one more potential site, and it's already a slow market and one where not enough sites have reached critical mass. The fundamental problem, of course, is that the market for redevelopment and intensification is being cannibalized on a much grander scale by greenfield. That's the market imbalance that needs to be solved. Ideally at a regional level -- one thing worse than new greenfield housing in Calgary is the same housing being built in greenfield at Airdrie or Cochrane, paying Airdrie taxes while using Calgary services and driving an extra 20 km a day to do so. If that larger imbalance could be solved, then this Midtown project would be, frankly it'd still be an okay plan at best. But at least in that case one more mediocre TOD site wouldn't be taking food from an already starving segment.
livewirecalgary.com
