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Calgary's Heritage Resources

Losing our Bay building would be a tragedy! we probably have the nicest in the country! Winnipeg's store is pretty nice too, would be a shame to see it go as well. According to the report, the Winnipeg store is essentially worthless, not too surprising given the market in that city.
 
The article mentions Vancouver, Edmonton & Winnipeg as up for sale. Up for sale does not mean the building will be torn down in all cases. HBC would merely lease the space from the buyer in Vancouver and Edmonton.
The only site that appears in jeopardy is Winnipeg as there is no value to the building itself after HBC closes. It would have to come down so that something of value could be built in it's place.
I have not heard any talk about HBC closing the downtown Calgary store but the way retail business is suffering in the core right now ... who knows what the future holds. :oops:
 
Doesn't specifically mention Calgary, but it says "This would likely be the fate of other HBC downtown locations in Canada" so I think it may be up to the city to protect the building if HBC won't.

When the Guild opened in part of the HBC space, did they add to HBC's bottom line, or the owner of the mall?
 
UrbanWarrior said:
It would be completely insane to demo the HBC store in this day and age. That would be akin to Montreal demoing the Bonsecours Market building. I feel like it would have a really low chance of happening, but stupider things have been proposed. This is one of our last 10 major historic structures, it's shocking that it's not protected really. What is wrong with the Calgary Heritage Authority?
Click to expand...
It's out of the Calgary Heritage Authority's hands (now known as Heritage Calgary). The Alberta government has the legal power to legally protect without requiring compensation but it's rarely used, Calgary city council also has the power but they would need to "compensate for loss of economic value" should they go ahead. Although council has this power I don't believe it has ever been used. If the HBC building was at risk it would be an interesting test to see if they have the will to use it, and by extension the will to prevent demolitions of historic Stephen Avenue.
 
Working downtown occasionally and overlooking Chinatown, I've always noticed a little anomaly I wonder if someone could shed some light on.

At 306 and 310 Centre St, there are a couple of half houses - https://www.google.ca/maps/@51.0498848,-114.0624303,86m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu

They can be seen even more clearly on the streetview -

https://www.google.ca/maps/@51.0498...337497267!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205410&entry=ttu (also weird that the 80s built Dragon City Mall building here looks like it was sliced in half too)

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They were originally fuller houses. Looking at the old aerial maps, half of 306 seems to have disappeared sometime between 1988-95 and 310 between 1972-75. Weirdly though, they always seem to have been embedded or at least as far as can be made out in the older aerial maps. I wonder if the alley entrance was actually the main entrance or if they were ever standalone buildings. Does anybody know anything about them or has been inside them?
 
They were houses that have been expanded into the buildings you see today. In another thread someone had some of the history of them, quite interesting.
 
There are several on 17 Ave as well.
 
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