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Calgary's Beltline

Co-op midtown market was sort of a relocation; the old co-op was in the empty block across from Sunterra. In the big city-level picture, it's a relocation, from the perspective of an area resident who at the time lived in Mount Royal House (above Bottlescrew Bills) and walked to carry groceries, it may as well have been Abercrombie's relocation from Chinook Centre (as seen on Reddit):
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Inglewood has a very unique main street; I understand historically that the residents and BRZ have fought chains, which has benefits, but also means that some categories are just hard to find.

In the most iconic block of Kensington (10A to 11 St), (and it's been a while, so I'm googling it) in addition to three indie coffee places (including Hexagon), and half a dozen food places ranging from BBQ to bistro, there are:
Clothing consignment
Florist
Escape room
Bookstore
Movie theatre
Wine store
Cell repair
Cannabis store
Tea store
Gift store (Manana - international hippie stuff)

The most comparable block in Inglewood is 11tn to 12th Ave. It has - as well as perhaps half a dozen places to eat and drink (more bars, no coffee):
Record store
5 clothing stores, mostly upscale (one consignment)
3 antique/vintage furniture stores (including the rug shop)
3 home gift stores
Optometrist
Dentist
Bank
Used car lot
Music venue / bar (Ironwood)
Vintage art glass
Art party workshop
Yarn store
Bedding store
Book store

I suppose there are fashionistas who shop for clothes several times a week, but almost everything in Kensington (escape room excluded) is more useful for a resident to shop at on at least a semi-regular basis, where Inglewood caters to high end shoppers, but I feel like there's only so many Persian rugs or $140 t-shirts someone needs at any given time. Even some of the more regular use stuff - the optometrist, dentist and bank - are dead in the evenings and weekends. Inglewood's main street is a great place to visit, Kensington's is a great place to live.
 
I thought this was a new thread, but it's from 2016. Somehow I missed it. 😴 I took a walk around 17th ave and also down 4th street today, and both streets were hopping. I know it's due to the good weather, but I haven't seen either of those streets that busy on a winter's day in a while. The neighborhood is starting to get a real big city bustle feeling to it. And the neighborhood isn't done rising in population!
 
Patrick.1980 said:
I thought this was a new thread, but it's from 2016. Somehow I missed it. 😴 I took a walk around 17th ave and also down 4th street today, and both streets were hopping. I know it's due to the good weather, but I haven't seen either of those streets that busy on a winter's day in a while. The neighborhood is starting to get a real big city bustle feeling to it. And the neighborhood isn't done rising in population!
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The thread was in a different section, but was moved into the General Discussion section because there is higher traffic here.
 
With the city seemingly no longer doing municipal census's, are we going to be able to get numbers for neighborhoods like the Beltline?
 
Statscan has numbers for different areas in the city. The numbers aren't as easy to find as they were in the city census info, but I recall they are in the census tract numbers or some such.
 
Zoom said:
With the city seemingly no longer doing municipal census's, are we going to be able to get numbers for neighborhoods like the Beltline?
Click to expand...
I believe Statscan will be releasing data from the 2021 census pertaining to individual communities. Not sure when that will be, but they did it for the 2016 census about 2 years after the census. Unfortunately, by the time we get the info, it'll be well out of date. The last civic census was 2019, and the Beltline was at 25,129 at the time. In the almost 4 years since that census, a number of new buildings have been built and have residents. The following buildings were built and opened after April 2019:

The Royal (223 units)
BLVD (628 units)
Park Central - first phase (360 units)
11+11 (369 units)
The Fifth (34 units)
Soho (390 units)
Cube (66 units)
UPTEN (379 units)
Redstone (137 units)
Underwood (225 units)

Those will have added 2,809 units total. Plus the units in Oliver Phase 1. Park Point also opened 5 months before the 2019 census, and had a fair amount of vacant unit at that time. Units that are probably full or mostly full. The Beltline's population is quite likely ~ 30K right now. With, 1400 10th Ave, The Hat 14th, 4th street Lofts, Park Central 2, and Oliver II and Nude are done, it will easily be over 30k, maybe as high as 32K
 
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With all of that, plus whichever towers go ahead next, and the 15 residential conversions in the CBD, we could see a combined population in the downtown neighbourhoods getting mighty close to 100,000 by census 2031.
 
That would solidly dense core. Which downtown neighbourhoods with that include Sunalta. Sunnyside, etc.?
 
Neither of those neighbourhoods are downtown, so no. Sunnyside, Sunalta, Hillhurst, West Hillhurst, Crescent Heights, Mount Royal, Inglewood, Ramsay, Bridgeland, and Mission are considered the “inner ring” of the inner city. Definitely not “downtown” though. However, in conversation almost everyone refers to 4 Street Mission as “going drinking downtown”, but it’s still not. The other neighbourhoods are usually referred to as their names, Kensington, Bridgeland, and Inglewood especially.


The 6 downtown neighbourhoods are CBD, Beltline, East Village, West End, Eau Claire, and Chinatown. Approx 4 km2. I believe 4.4 if the undevelopable Stampede Park wasteland is included. Still a very dense downtown for any North American city under 4 million people even with Stampede Park included, at nearly 23,000/km2 once we hit 100,000.
 
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