I think concerns of the Rivers District plan being in jeopardy are a bit dramatic. People need to remember, we still have an arena there with the Saddledome, so the same number of arenas that were planned to be in the final master plan.
**Enormous rant, beware**
My problem stems from the fact that land developers and builders are separate in Calgary. "Land Developers" value the land in East Victoria Park based on a couple of public investments like the expanded BMO centre and the Event Centre like it will be the catalyst for something but it is never fully realized. Add in the Green Line and *boom* speculative land values on the part of developers. Builders then can't make sense of the $psf required for what speculative land developers think this grandiose "urban district" will be worth and are unwilling to pay that much for the land to be able to build something people could occupy in the near-term on something financeable now.
To me it is an absolute waste of time and kills our ability to build a better city, today. East Village public infrastructure improvements were based off a TIF (Tax Increment Financing scheme) when the Bow Tower was being developed. The Bow didn't end up building the southern portion and we lost a historic building replaced with a fenced wood deck and parking lot and we got some development in East Village that will take another 20+ years to build out fully. Ultimately, the Bow Tower development as it sits today in my opinion has negatively impacted our urban fabric. The Bridges took at least that long to build out after we blew up the General Hospital, and East Village is an even larger scale. CMLC and others think that based on the BMO Centre, Green Line and Event Centre that Victoria Park will be a viable place for downtown reinvestment and will happen soon. Based on what exactly? Market fundamentals? If that was the case people would be buying up the land to develop right now (or years ago).
Seemingly everyone forgot Victoria Park used to be a neighbourhood with homes, businesses and apartments that catered to some of the lowest income Calgarians. They tore it down to expand the Stampede as they had grandiose plans. Those never came to fruition, and the land became gravel parking lots that are a scar on the city. Had they kept the homes and businesses, it could've looked like Inglewood today and the urban fabric would've remained intact and developed naturally over time (not to mention continued to house some of the City's lowest income earners in the interim). The neighbourhood would've filled in and gentrified as the life cycle of the community permitted. But no, "urban decay" requires action here, and we bulldozed it all and replaced it with nothing. We hinge all our plans on land development speculation in a boom and bust economy and tear down whole neighbourhoods for Stampede expansion (or other business interests) that never end up happening. Then we create new urban master plans anchored on big ideas to fix these problems we have just created, and those plans never happen. Decades later we have gravel parking lots offered at ridiculously high prices, based on nothing but speculation that is not grounded in reality that allow these gravel parking lot wastelands to remain for decades that ruin our urban fabric, in perpetuity.
Frankly, East Victoria Park is worth whatever people are willing to build on it today and nothing more. Based on current speculative land pricing, only things like the Guardian and Arriva towers have been developed in decades. If this maintains, gravel parking lots are this area's future for the remainder of our lifetimes, with possibly two towers in the next 20+ years if we're lucky. Price the land at what builders are willing to pay to build 6-storey buildings. Closer to the river build townhomes. Stop having these useless, grandiose plans for podium towers, our market fundamentals are different than Vancouver's. Just build things that make sense for today's climate that can be financed now, and fill in this place that is in every respect a great location. If no one is building things for hopes of better and cooler master plans and Vancouver-style podium developments, we should rethink our city-building priorities. Price these parcels like they are University District or even Seton, as they have not demonstrated to the market that they are worth land values that permit towers. Anything else is speculative and overvaluing the land at this point.
Fill in our urban fabric with low-rise now, get these sites being productive tax-wise, and stop thinking Calgary is 'world-class' and treat it like a slightly more important Dayton, Ohio. When we have a nice cohesive urban fabric and we have a UDRP, Administration, CPC and Council that enforces urbane development, and city-wide policy and an LUB that encourages good street-level interaction and decent building materials, maybe we can build an urban fabric. The fact that the Rivers District Plan calls for towers is laughable. In what market is that productive when you release 14 new greenfield, heavily subsidized suburbs with enourmous amounts of new infrastructure to fund every few years? Get a grip, and create plans that lead to prices for land that can allow for competitively priced multi-family product and stop speculating on something becoming the new "entertainment district" that will just be another pipe dream to add to this City's failed projects.
We have too many land developers trying to rezone land for towers on 30+ year plans, or huge developments like the Event Centre that are supposed to be hail mary "placemakers", and not enough solid, small projects in our Centre City that fix or add to our urban fabric. It stops Calgary from having small and organic growth in neighbourhoods like East Victoria Park that saw the bulldozing of formerly productive, low-income places for speculative, full-block tower developments that created desolate, sterile urban environments that have plagued Calgary for decades.
On the brightside, i've been noticing a lot more urban fabric building projects in our surrounding inner-city community and local builders with a vision for the city which is promising. Let these same builders do something with East Victoria Park, with projects that make sense today that won't take forever to build out. No more master plan pipe dreams, build a good urban fabric of smaller, de-risked projects for today's market.
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