News   Apr 03, 2020
Pastel Morning
 5.7K     1 
News   Apr 02, 2020
A Message to Our Readers
 7.4K     3 
News   Apr 02, 2020
Soon to be Gone
 4.4K     0 

Urban Development and Proposals Discussion

No it hasn't. Very cool!
 
Some renders of it. Seems like their looking at it being a student residence. But for... what campus??

Screenshot_20241204_121359_Chrome~2.jpg
Screenshot_20241204_121612_Chrome.jpg
Screenshot_20241204_121909_Chrome~2.jpg
Screenshot_20241204_122143_Chrome~2.jpg
 
UrbanWarrior said:
Some renders of it. Seems like their looking at it being a student residence. But for... what campus??
Click to expand...
Campus on the lower floors (but probably too many of them for the elevator system to handle), residences up above. The Calgary Tech proposal from Mayoral candidate Jan Damery would align with this vision, and both UCalgary and SAIT have been musing about larger presence for years (getting the money to actually do it has been a problem). Calgary Tech's scale was between 4 and 5 thousand staff and students, which would run between $80 and $100 million a year in operations cost, and require a capital build out between $200 and $300 million. Of course since then market for computer science education has totally collapsed, so couldn't count solely on CS, analytics, and math to fill the classrooms (those programs are relatively cheap to run as they don't require specialized facilities and lab techs to run/maintain them). The goal was to finally address the gaps Amazon had talked about, and add a substantial number of university spots to Calgary to address the growing population and education demand.

The Kenney government got within 10 days of announcing something of a similar scale, but the project stumbled in summer 2021 with a few members of treasury board balking at the cost for something for 'downtown calgary'. It was the project that would have finally brought provincial money for revitalizing the core that no one could talk about but everyone was complaining about not happening, indirectly (those complaining may not have had all of the details, I only heard drips here and there and pieced it together).

Adding post-secondary capacity in downtown is a hard thing to do, mostly driven that it sounds a lot easier to do, and like a much better idea for the institutions themselves, than it actually is. You need scale, moving an entire faculty for ones that are mostly self contained professional schools (SAPL to the old central library site is that), building out a true campus so general degrees can happen with only very limited need to take classes on the main campus).

I wouldn't be surprised if P&W had done some initial studies to support that process a few years back (a class-c wold have covered what we see plus costing, minus the nicer drawings), and had some people make them look fancy and release them as speculative to make the work not a waste.
 
Last edited:
Glad to see a vision for its' rebirth, but that pavilion on top looks whacky. Make it a green roof but please don't tack on a clashing feature like that. The Nexen building is beautiful as is. One of my favourites in the city.
 
darwink said:
Campus on the lower floors (but probably too many of them for the elevator system to handle), residences up above. The Calgary Tech proposal from Mayoral candidate Jan Damery would align with this vision, and both UCalgary and SAIT have been musing about larger presence for years (getting the money to actually do it has been a problem). Calgary Tech's scale was between 4 and 5 thousand staff and students, which would run between $80 and $100 million a year in operations cost, and require a capital build out between $200 and $300 million. Of course since then market for computer science education has totally collapsed, so couldn't count solely on CS, analytics, and math to fill the classrooms (those programs are relatively cheap to run as they don't require specialized facilities and lab techs to run/maintain them). The goal was to finally address the gaps Amazon had talked about, and add a substantial number of university spots to Calgary to address the growing population and education demand.

The Kenney government got within 10 days of announcing something of a similar scale, but the project stumbled in summer 2021 with a few members of treasury board balking at the cost for something for 'downtown calgary'. It was the project that would have finally brought provincial money for revitalizing the core that no one could talk about but everyone was complaining about not happening, indirectly (those complaining may not have had all of the details, I only heard drips here and there and pieced it together).

Adding post-secondary capacity in downtown is a hard thing to do, mostly driven that it sounds a lot easier to do, and like a much better idea for the institutions themselves, than it actually is. You need scale, moving an entire faculty for ones that are mostly self contained professional schools (SAPL to the old central library site is that), building out a true campus so general degrees can happen with only very limited need to take classes on the main campus).

I wouldn't be surprised if P&W had done some initial studies to support that process a few years back (a class-c wold have covered what we see plus costing, minus the nicer drawings), and had some people make them look fancy and release them as speculative to make the work not a waste.
Click to expand...

ACAD was looking at a DT location when I attended in the 00's. Not sure if that's still a consideration or not, but the entire campus would probably fit in the Nexen building.
 
O-tac said:
ACAD was looking at a DT location when I attended in the 00's. Not sure if that's still a consideration or not, but the entire campus would probably fit in the Nexen building.
Click to expand...
ACAD isn't of the scale necessary for this iirc. Plus harder to craft a narrative of rebirth for downtown. Certainly they didn't get to the point of having the province aligned. The block with Barron, Petro-FINA, and the theatres and print buildings on the south side, I speculate wildly as aligning more with their needs. A lot of ground floor access. Buildings that can be retrofitted for high ventilation needs. short buildings with more % of floor space at 4th floor or lower (student circulation is really hard to design around (anyone seeing the problems at UCalgary's library around class changes can attest).

AUARTS has trouble with institutional sustainability even without considering space issues.
 
darwink said:
Campus on the lower floors (but probably too many of them for the elevator system to handle)
Click to expand...
I don't doubt that this is true, but this is interesting to me. Office buildings like this are designed for a high density of workers during the day, all arriving, taking lunch, and leaving around the same times of the day. Is this not similar to a crush of students going to their next class?

darwink said:
Of course since then market for computer science education has totally collapsed
Click to expand...
There still is a market, though. I'm in software, and the pay is still good, and it's still difficult to find good people. It's not what it was a couple of years ago, but the sector is still growing.
 
badc0ffee said:
Office buildings like this are designed for a high density of workers during the day, all arriving, taking lunch, and leaving around the same times of the day. Is this not similar to a crush of students going to their next class?
Click to expand...
Offices at high density are what, 180 square feet per worker with circulation (that's the federal target for their high density office renewal iirc)? Craigie Hall Block C 105 is 216 seats in ~3940 square feet including the access hallway, or ~18 square feet person. Even adding in bathrooms, increasing support spaces by a lot, you are still way more dense than offices. Edit: also account for that volume need to change locations in ~ 10 minutes, not spaced out even over 30 minutes.

1733337211991.png
1733337355549.png
1733337437701.png
 
Last edited:
badc0ffee said:
There still is a market, though. I'm in software, and the pay is still good, and it's still difficult to find good people. It's not what it was a couple of years ago, but the sector is still growing.
Click to expand...
my understanding is that the early career positions necessary to have people for the 'good people' competitions your exposed to, have hollowed out. Even at the time of the amazon bid, the new grads weren't seen as the problem, the problem is having an ecosystem that is progressing enough people in their careers to become 'good people'. Amazon also didn't want to be the only game in town, competing against itself. It can recruit people to anywhere, it wanted the ecosystem to select people from.

It is a hard nut to crack, though I am very impressed at the progress of Calgary's tech scene.
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top