Calgary's Downtown Population

[Beltline_B]

I recall seeing a graphic on the Edmonton page a while back showing the percentage of missing middle relative to all starts and Calgary and Edmonton faired very well. I don't know where the Edmonton starts are being built, or if any are in its downtown, but in overall numbers pretty solid.

 

[thommyjo]

I think there are some conversions on the books, not sure if anything has actually started yet though.

There’s a few being done:

CN Building - 344 units
Phipps McKinnon - ~60 units I think plus office and retail.

And some recent ones:
Capital tower - 150+
Peak tower - 200+

All of these moving forward without taxpayer subsidies. But what taxpayers are subsidizing is the extension of our CRL and a handful of infrastructure upgrades/parks that have spurred on proposals for 14 new buildings. About half of those will be smaller 6-8 story builds. 100-200 unit type sizes. The other half are more substantial like The Parks and Stationlands.

Edmonton has nowhere near the office building count of Calgary, so there’s a lot less conversions needed. Edmonton also did a lot of conversions in the 2003-2013 window for a lot of older offices and warehouse spaces.

Edmonton is better off doing tax incentives for new projects that get rid of parking lots than conversions. In 2021 they did a program like this that saw a dozen projects move forward, about half downtown and half in Whikwentowin (beltline type area west of DT).

 

[Mountain Man]

Edmonton also filled a bunch of parking lots with the big new park, definitely plan to check that out next time I'm there.

 

[AtlanticAvenue]

It would be nice if we could do that along 9th avenue along the tracks where there is like 9 blocks of uninterrupted parking lots.

 

[Beltline_B]

Here is the graphic that I saw in the Edmonton thread showing missing middle housing. Unfortunately it doesn't cover anything to do with location, but are overall numbers. Still if you look at the last 4 years or so it shows solid numbers for missing middle starts for Calgary and Edmonton relative to the big three metros.

 

[Albertasaurus]

Interesting how the types of housing varies so broadly between the cities. It actually shows how the big eastern cities really don't have great housing variety and all with almost no suites (Toronto heavy on stacked towns, Ottawa with rowhouses and Montreal heavy on apartments and stacked towns) compared to the western ones where there is much greater housing variety.

 

[Surrealplaces]

Calgary's crushing it when it comes to the missing middle. Calgary really took off in 2024, I wonder how much was to do with blanket zoning vs just a high volume in general?