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Another phase starting up by the looks of it.
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so weird all this density grew up so far from a station. somewhat like kingsland landing or whatever its called. would have thought chinook or heritage woukd make more sense. not like there isnt space available. maybe no one cares about being near a station.
 
The last of the four towers. They aren’t exactly architectural beauties, however given the location it’s a good fit and a good function, and they add good density to the area.
The nicer towers will be reserved for the parcels directly east of Chinook centre 😉
 
Beltline_B said:
The last of the four towers. They aren’t exactly architectural beauties, however given the location it’s a good fit and a good function, and they add good density to the area.
The nicer towers will be reserved for the parcels directly east of Chinook centre 😉
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DougB said:
Lumino's site used to be Manchester School. Assuming the City acquired this land from CBE at low cost.
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It goes to show you it is possible to densify on existing publicly owned land, while also revealing all the weird contradictions that seem to go into our use (or lack of use) of public lands.

The location of Lumino is fine, but I have to wonder what the logic was 20 years ago when this was all dreamed up and how much was a weird one-off opportunity vs. something strategic. I don't think I am too far off in saying we have seen many school sites all over the city come and go - not to mention park-and-rides, random remnant parcels for roads expansions etc. - that are city-owned, not used to anywhere close to their potential, have no real tangible long-term need, and likely in an equivalently "good" locations to Lumino in terms of accessibility to transit and resident amenities (i.e. parks, community facilities etc.)

Even if we collective think this is a good location for residential development - fine, but then why not the rest of the MacLeod strip? I think the city owns a good number of large parcels in the whole neighbourhood between Lumino and downtown right along Macleod. If residential works here, why can't any of these other sites be put to work instead of sitting for decades under utilized? Some of that limitation is funding of course and weird site-specific physical constraints, but surely that's not the case for all the thousands of acres out there sitting idle.

Was thinking about this in relation to the Glenmore Apartments proposal recently discussed. Apparently there's enough demand for a private developer to pull a proposal together on what I would have thought was a pretty tough location with questionable end-user residential experiences (being at the corner of one of the least pedestrian-oriented, ugliest and loudest interchanges in Calgary). If that's good enough, why not all those vacant parcels nearby from the Glenmore expansion parcel a few decades ago?

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If a surplus school site a block from Chinook Centre and MacLeod Trail in an industrial park can be worth developing housing on, surely a empty useless parcel with otherwise similar location characteristics in a residential neighbourhood would be at least equally valid. The market seems to think so with the Glenmore Apartments example.

Much of what we do with public lands seems uncoordinated and ad-hoc to no real public or private benefit. Or perhaps more accurately, processes and hierarchies coherent and rationale when only considering their individual narrow viewpoint and objectives are guiding how we use public lands, but ultimately result in incoherent and inefficient land outcomes overall, contradicting our stated goals for city development.
 
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