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General Construction Updates

Would anyone care to donate any pictures to my ongoing efforts to revitalize Calgary's wikipedia pages relating to downtown and its surroundings?

Pictures I'm looking for: high quality skyline shots, high quality skyline panoramas, national music centre profile shot, high quality skyline shot featuring The Bow, a shot of the current East Village skyline, etc.

Any contributions would be appreciated.
 
Next Weeks CPC has a few interesting items. Here is the link to the agenda, I will list the items that are of interest (IMO):
http://www.calgary.ca/PDA/pd/Docume...ission/agenda/2017/agenda-cpc-february-23.pdf

Item 5.01, starting on page 93: This is a redesignation of an old strip mall in North Glenmore Park, to allow for a 37 unit, retail at grade building. The report says there is a DP in already, but no rendering as this is only for land use.

Items 5.06 and 5.07, starting on page 175: The redevelopment of the Hamptons golf course. Doesn't appear to be the entire golf course with this application, and it also doesn't appear to be nearly as intense as other golf course redevelopemnts, as they are all single family homes being proposed. Having said that, the application still received 2500 letters of opposition according to the report. Administration still recommends approval.

Item 5.09, starting on page 257: This one is for infrastructure geeks, it is the DP for the expansion of the Bonnybrook Waste Water Treatment Plant.

Item 5.11, starting on page 361: This is a big policy item for redevelopment. It is an amendment to the MDP, to bring in the "Developed Areas Guidebook", essentially the policy guide that should be followed for all redevelopment in the city.

Item 5.12, starting on page 387: This one is for the technical planning geeks, as it is two new "mixed use" districts being created in the land use bylaw.

The last couple of items are the city initiated land use re-designations for the Main Streets initiative, for the streets of 17th Ave and 37th Street SW (first item) and Bowness Road in Montgomery (second item). I am not highlighting them per se, as they are pretty long items, and given that they are city initiated, doesn't necessarily mean they will lead to any sort of redevelopment anytime soon.

So no big DP renderings this time, but a few items that may be of interest to some of you.
 
Cyric said:
I was on Macleod today and I noticed that there is a drill on site for the Macleod Professional Centre. I haven't been down Macleod in ages so I don't know if it is a recent development or not, happy to see that corner moving forward though.
Click to expand...
The last time I went past there I don't recall seeing a drill, so maybe they are going ahead now.
 
So I was walking around downtown today for Teacher's Convention and had a few observations:
1. Sidewalks: Good God does Calgary need to revamp a lot of their sidewalks. Stephen Ave is a mess with broken bricks, poor asphalt patchwork, mix of different materials and styles, and overall general lack of maintenance. As the busiest pedestrian road in the city and the main tourist attraction, that street should be manicured 24/7 with a cohesive paving style. I would love a cobble stone style street with slate tile sidewalks all the way from City Hall to Eighth Ave Place.

Sidewalks outside of Stephen Ave are no better. 4th ave by the Cecil Hotel is a mess. YWCA block and the old school board buildings are worse. Just a trashy mess. Calgary needs to basically re-do a significant portion of downtown sidewalks.

2. Streetlights/traffic signals: Ugh, can we finally remove every brown streetlight and traffic signal in the downtown at least. Every street light and traffic single from the river to the railroad tracks, and mewata to the stampede need to be replaced with a cohesive style. I really like the 7th ave lights for the entire downtown, and some classic black ones for Stephen Ave.

3. Trees/water features: Simple. More trees, planters, and water features needed. Why does Edmonton have some amazing water fountains and we have squat? The giant concrete wasteland of City Hall should be a huge fountain that does water shows.

I know it's winter and the city looks messy, but we need to really spruce up downtown.
 
MichaelS said:
Next Weeks CPC has a few interesting items. Here is the link to the agenda, I will list the items that are of interest (IMO):
http://www.calgary.ca/PDA/pd/Docume...ission/agenda/2017/agenda-cpc-february-23.pdf



The last couple of items are the city initiated land use re-designations for the Main Streets initiative, for the streets of 17th Ave and 37th Street SW (first item) and Bowness Road in Montgomery (second item). I am not highlighting them per se, as they are pretty long items, and given that they are city initiated, doesn't necessarily mean they will lead to any sort of redevelopment anytime soon.
Click to expand...

I'm happy to see the city doing these main street initiatives. I've seen the one for Bridgeland and it looks promising.
 
The Familia said:
So I was walking around downtown today for Teacher's Convention and had a few observations:
1. Sidewalks: Good God does Calgary need to revamp a lot of their sidewalks. Stephen Ave is a mess with broken bricks, poor asphalt patchwork, mix of different materials and styles, and overall general lack of maintenance. As the busiest pedestrian road in the city and the main tourist attraction, that street should be manicured 24/7 with a cohesive paving style. I would love a cobble stone style street with slate tile sidewalks all the way from City Hall to Eighth Ave Place.

Sidewalks outside of Stephen Ave are no better. 4th ave by the Cecil Hotel is a mess. YWCA block and the old school board buildings are worse. Just a trashy mess. Calgary needs to basically re-do a significant portion of downtown sidewalks.

2. Streetlights/traffic signals: Ugh, can we finally remove every brown streetlight and traffic signal in the downtown at least. Every street light and traffic single from the river to the railroad tracks, and mewata to the stampede need to be replaced with a cohesive style. I really like the 7th ave lights for the entire downtown, and some classic black ones for Stephen Ave.

3. Trees/water features: Simple. More trees, planters, and water features needed. Why does Edmonton have some amazing water fountains and we have squat? The giant concrete wasteland of City Hall should be a huge fountain that does water shows.

I know it's winter and the city looks messy, but we need to really spruce up downtown.
Click to expand...

To reply to #3, Calgary has many more freeze-thaw cycles than basically any other major city around due to our chinooks. Outdoor water features tend to leak due to continual expansion and contraction. Fifth Ave Place used to have a water feature, but Brookfield removed it last year since it was leaking into the parkade.
 
jdixon said:
To reply to #3, Calgary has many more freeze-thaw cycles than basically any other major city around due to our chinooks. Outdoor water features tend to leak due to continual expansion and contraction. Fifth Ave Place used to have a water feature, but Brookfield removed it last year since it was leaking into the parkade.
Click to expand...
Does Gulf Canada square still have their water fountain out front? I remember talk of removing it....due to those siiues you mentioned.
 
The Familia said:
So I was walking around downtown today for Teacher's Convention and had a few observations:
1. Sidewalks: Good God does Calgary need to revamp a lot of their sidewalks. Stephen Ave is a mess with broken bricks, poor asphalt patchwork, mix of different materials and styles, and overall general lack of maintenance. As the busiest pedestrian road in the city and the main tourist attraction, that street should be manicured 24/7 with a cohesive paving style. I would love a cobble stone style street with slate tile sidewalks all the way from City Hall to Eighth Ave Place.

Sidewalks outside of Stephen Ave are no better. 4th ave by the Cecil Hotel is a mess. YWCA block and the old school board buildings are worse. Just a trashy mess. Calgary needs to basically re-do a significant portion of downtown sidewalks.

2. Streetlights/traffic signals: Ugh, can we finally remove every brown streetlight and traffic signal in the downtown at least. Every street light and traffic single from the river to the railroad tracks, and mewata to the stampede need to be replaced with a cohesive style. I really like the 7th ave lights for the entire downtown, and some classic black ones for Stephen Ave.

3. Trees/water features: Simple. More trees, planters, and water features needed. Why does Edmonton have some amazing water fountains and we have squat? The giant concrete wasteland of City Hall should be a huge fountain that does water shows.

I know it's winter and the city looks messy, but we need to really spruce up downtown.
Click to expand...

Sidewalks have always been a pet peeve of mine. Downtown should have sidewalks in much better condition. It would also be nice of some of the telephone poles around downtown or Beltline could be buried. I know it's costly, but it would sure look 100 x better.
 
There was a bunch of geotech work going on at the Marriot Clubsport site on Saturday and Sunday. Since that project seems to be dead in the water I would guess that it was someone doing their due diligence prior to purchasing the site.
 
Cyric said:
There was a bunch of geotech work going on at the Marriot Clubsport site on Saturday and Sunday. Since that project seems to be dead in the water I would guess that it was someone doing their due diligence prior to purchasing the site.
Click to expand...
The property is indeed in the midst of changing hands, I can't recall who was buying it, but it was somebody familiar who has done other projects.
 
Just to dispel the myth that Calgary has an unnaturally small downtown population, I just recalculated Calgary's downtown population using the 2016 municipal census figures. They work out to a combined total of 18,114 across 1.8 km2, for a density of 10,065/km2. Whereas Edmonton's is a smaller population spread across a larger area, under 14,000 across 2.3 km2 as of 2014, and Ottawa's downtown (according to wikipedia) is under 5,000 spread across 1.25 km2 as of 2016. So I have no idea where that myth came from, but yeah, busted.

Edit: yes, as you guessed, I have nothing to do during reading week :p
 
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And with other projects still on the way that population will continue to grow for a while yet. Another 1263 units plus, people from Pulse who weren't counted in the last census should put the population right around 20K

Avenue 188
Vogue 232
Concord 108
Parkside 303
N3 167
The Hat 221
Verve 228
INK 119
 
Surrealplaces said:
And with other projects still on the way that population will continue to grow for a while yet. Another 1263 units plus, people from Pulse who weren't counted in the last census should put the population right around 20K

Avenue 188
Vogue 232
Concord 108
Parkside 303
N3 167
The Hat 221
Verve 228
INK 119
Click to expand...

You forgot

Telus Sky - 326
Elements on First - 32

Also don't forget that technically Arris (500 units) is UC, just not launched yet. Also, is Parkside really only 303 units? That seems awfully small for 6 buildings, one of them housing 141 units alone, and another 2 hosting 77 units a piece. (According to BuzzBuzzHome)
 
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