JoeUrban said:
The thing is Inglewood has ample former industrial land that is not developed to achieve this without affecting the main street.
This area here could be full of medium to high density development, but it sits vacant while towers are proposed among the historical strips.

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Aren't there a couple historic buildings on this site too?
 
CBBarnett said:
But what's being debating is one building, on one site not the whole street. I know that is frustrating, but one building is all that is debated today - other hypothetical buildings in the future will have their own debate or their own merits and trade-offs.

That's what some miss from "saving 9th Ave". It's not save-able, nor should it be. Some buildings might be, specific lots and interesting businesses might be (assuming the owners or market they serve doesn't change), but the corridor as a whole isn't really a thing that should be locked in and "saved". If the community could sell it's historic main street as a feature when it's 2 /4 of it's most prominent corners are dilapidated parking lots, I am fully confident it can do it with a slick, 21st century 12-storey building that brings another 100-200 local residents/customers in the area and creates another landmark.

A near-iconic design (subjective to my opinion, I know) replacing a used car lot at a prime corner, preserving and integrating an actual heritage property, on an underpopulated main street two blocks from a future multi-billion dollar rapid transit line isn't where I would dig in. I think we should save the ammunition for the truly community-destroying projects. I don't see how the RNDSQR one is that community-destroying one except it's first (1) and it's tall (2).

If the goal is to preserve Inglewood's historic main street's relevance and economic sustainability, accepting this proposal brings you closer to that goal than rejecting it.
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This page is for 1 project, but the residents are against 3 projects in total.
 
JoeUrban said:
Think this is missing the point, or complaint to some extent. There are two concerns as I see it
1 - 12 story buildings are probably not appropriate in a historical community
2 - Being that the density was approved in an area where 6 stories was written into the ARP, what is to stop the rest of the strip from being redeveloped into 12 stories? In my mind new 12 story buildings is not something anyone would consider a positive step to preserving a historical residential community

The 'historically the parcel was a used car lot' etc is irrelevant since I haven't heard a single argument that the parcel should not be redeveloped.

Lastly, I know people have varying opinions of the analysis done by Urban Strategies but this graphic from the report I think says the story. This is a photo of a view down 9th avenue today and one with 6 and 12 story redevelopment

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Doesn't really say 'historical community' to me. And it also assumes the actual historic buildings will be retained which I think is laughably naive, since there's no evidence at all that they also won't come down one by one.
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I'm sympathetic to the idea that approving this building might make historic buildings in Inglewood more vulnerable to demolition. However, I am definitely confused by the idea that tall buildings are incompatible with historical neighbourhoods. The skyscraper was invited 135 years ago! Which means that skyscrapers had existed decades before most of Inglewood was developed.

In my view, the biggest problem with tall buildings are (1) they raise land values in a way that makes smaller, low- or mid-rise development unattractive (hence all the empty lots in downtown cores that sit undeveloped), (2) tall buildings tend to have dead spaces at ground level for things like ventilation, parking garage entrances, fire escapes, etc.

I don't think #2 is a problem with this development. #1 might be a problem, but there are ways to mitigate it and it may already be a problem even if this building is blocked.
 
JoeUrban said:
I get what you're saying, but the problem is every city that matters in the world has methods to protect their historic sites. Calgary on the other hand seems completely unable to do it, it's the most incredible 'Can't Do" attitude I've ever seen. And the 'leave it to the market' methodology that gets advocated has lead to the the lost of hundreds of amazing buildings in Calgary. And there's no reason to assume that won't continue until they're all or almost all gone. So what happens is in the face of 'everything is at threat', we get 'everything needs to be fought' Because you can't rely on letting lessor sites or areas go and fight for the best ones, because it's likely the best ones aren't any more likely to survive. I think it's very unrealistic to think that a 12 story building on a parking lot won't lead to every new development in Inglewood being proposed for 12 or more stories on parking lots, 70s run down buildings, and every heritage building in the community. There's just no reason to think that won't happen since almost every new development tries to push the rules and tends to get their way. And the more that do, the more they can be pointed at to say 'Well you let THEM do it, that's now the new normal" I think it's a real concern that a cool 12 story building on a parking lot will lead to a few decades from now 9th Avenue just looking like another nondescript part of downtown, a new high-rise canyon to add to the count. I'd love for that not to be the case, for Inglewood to be an eclectic mix of heritage, cool new developments, and maintain the funky character it's had for decades, but one thing I've learned is unless there is policy that dictates that, everything will be lost, and as new precedents appear that loss will accelerate.

I really am concerned for a time when people have to leave town to go find cool historic areas "like Calgary used to have"
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Yep I hear where you are coming from - "letting things go" approach has lost us some huge heritage assets over the years. The heritage protection issues you mention are a real problem, Calgary has fared worse than most thanks to a ill-timed-for-preservation multi-decade mega boom during the 20th century's peak-suburbanization period. Our policies were weak, while our desire for growth (and ability to realize it) was strong. Bad combo for heritage buildings.

This was particularly rough on Calgary in two ways:
  1. First, we didn't produce a ton of quality "heritage-worthy" buildings prior to our post-war boom years on account of being too small, poor and sparse. Plenty of stick-frame old houses, but fewer early 20th century office blocks, apartment blocks. It's why Inglewood's story isn't simply a story of losing it's character buildings through replacement; it's a story of never completing a corridor with buildings at all, let alone all in a single era we now consider heritage ones.
  2. Second, we had all the money and demand in the world to replace nearly everything rapidly during post-war booms when we didn't care so much about preserving kind-of old, kind-of interesting buildings. This was particularly devastating in almost everywhere in the inner city outside of Stephen Avenue.
To see the opposite process in effect, check out Hamilton, Ontario. It has amazing heritage buildings, districts and some of the best-looking main streets. It has far more experience with heritage planning and policy - largely due to the opposite problem:
  1. In 1891, shortly after Calgary was founded, Calgary had 3,800 people - the size of today's Claresholm, AB. Hamilton was the 4th largest city in Canada with 49,000 resident's already (1891 Census). That's a lot more houses, but also banks, offices, institutions and investment in Hamilton. More buildings, higher quality buildings. Calgary slowly started to outpace Hamilton and grew faster but only became larger than Hamilton in 1966 - at a population of 330,000 and well past when most North American places stopped building quality main streets.
  2. The curves then flipped and accelerated: Calgary hit unprecedented prosperity and growth, while Hamilton languished as the manufacturing industry declined. Today Calgary is at 1.29M while Hamilton sits around 600,000.
While Calgary ripped up and redeveloped anything it could, Hamilton didn't even have the resources to tear down dilapidated buildings, even if they wanted to. We were even happy to tear down heritage for parking lots all throughout the core, Victoria Park and the Beltline as redevelopment and greater wealth was a near guarantee. As Hamilton's prospects declined, it increasingly was forced to looked to it's existing assets for value - it's heritage buildings. Policy, politics and investment started to match that. Our increasingly matched those needed to support redevelopment and high rates of growth.

Fast forward to today: thanks to a booming GTA and a painfully-drawn-out-but-consistent economic diversification process, Hamilton is really starting to leverage it's heritage into interesting communities and attracting investment again. Lots of cool and sophisticated work that is built off the heritage assets. Calgary tore much of our smaller base of heritage assets down and is now struggling to figure out what to do.

What's the take-away to my story?
In both cities economics comes first, always. Heritage buildings/districts are an economic driver for sure, but they are only one lever, and rarely the most powerful one unless you have no other industries (and therefore much bigger problems). In Hamilton's case it's heritage was better preserved, some due to better policy, but mostly due to economics. If their economy roared with redevelopment they would have lost a lot more heritage too, this is not to suggest there isn't anything to learn or adopt in heritage preservation or that it's hopeless, just that economics is the game that features heritage, not the other way around.

So where can better policy play a role? Well - policy helped get Inglewood a suburban-style Spolumbo's/parking lot. Surely a more traditional and true-to-the-character zero-setback, zero-parking retail would have been better. Better yet: a traditional-style lot-line-to-lot line 4 - 6 storey walkup, with Spolumbo's underneath?

In summary, lets do the small things and fight for good design, accepting trade-offs that meet the economics of today (occasional height) and support the community (preserve and integrate heritage assets) - which I think this proposal really does. Meanwhile lets attack bad design, heritage replacement with lower value products - and most importantly all the rules that make building traditional, agreeable main streets so hard in the first place (parking and set-back being the two most obvious ones).
 
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CBBarnett said:
Yep I hear where you are coming from - "letting things go" approach has lost us some huge heritage assets over the years. The heritage protection issues you mention are a real problem, Calgary has fared worse than most thanks to a ill-timed-for-preservation multi-decade mega boom during the 20th century's peak-suburbanization period. Our policies were weak, while our desire for growth (and ability to realize it) was strong. Bad combo for heritage buildings.

This was particularly rough on Calgary in two ways:
  1. First, we didn't produce a ton of quality "heritage-worthy" buildings prior to our post-war boom years on account of being too small, poor and sparse. Plenty of stick-frame old houses, but fewer early 20th century office blocks, apartment blocks. It's why Inglewood's story isn't simply a story of losing it's character buildings through replacement it's a story of never completing a corridor with buildings at all, let alone all in an era we now heritage ones.
  2. Second, we had all the money and demand in the world to replace nearly everything rapidly during post-war booms when we didn't care so much about preserving kind-of old, kind-of interesting buildings. This was particularly devastating in almost everywhere in the inner city outside of Stephen Avenue.
To see the opposite process in effect, check out Hamilton, Ontario. It has amazing heritage buildings, districts and some of the best-looking main streets. It has far more experience with heritage planning and policy - largely due to the opposite problem:
  1. In 1891, shortly after Calgary was founded, Calgary had 3,800 people - the size of today's Claresholm, AB. Hamilton was the 4th largest city in Canada with 49,000 resident's already (1891 Census). That's a lot more houses, but also banks, offices, institutions and investment in Hamilton. More buildings, higher quality buildings. Calgary slowly started to outpace Hamilton and grew faster but only became larger than Hamilton in 1966 - at a population of 330,000 and well past when most North American places stopped building quality main streets.
  2. The curves then flipped and accelerated: Calgary hit unprecedented prosperity and growth, while Hamilton languished as the manufacturing industry declined. Today Calgary is at 1.29M while Hamilton sits around 600,000.
While Calgary ripped up and redeveloped anything it could, Hamilton didn't even have the resources to tear down dilapidated buildings, even if they wanted to. We were even happy to tear down heritage for parking lots all throughout the core, Victoria Park and the Beltline as redevelopment and greater wealth was a near guarantee. As Hamilton's prospects declined, it increasingly was forced to looked to it's existing assets for value - it's heritage buildings. Policy, politics and investment started to match that. Our increasingly matched those needed to support redevelopment and high rates of growth.

Fast forward to today: thanks to a booming GTA and a painfully-drawn-out-but-consistent economic diversification process, Hamilton is really starting to leverage it's heritage into interesting communities and attracting investment again. Lots of cool and sophisticated work that is built off the heritage assets. Calgary tore much of our smaller base of heritage assets down and is now struggling to figure out what to do.

What's the take-away to my story?
In both cities economics comes first, always. Heritage buildings/districts are an economic driver for sure, but they are only one lever, and rarely the most powerful one unless you have no other industries (and therefore much bigger problems). In Hamilton's case it's heritage was better preserved, some due to better policy, but mostly due to economics. If their economic roared with redevelopment they would have lost a lot more heritage too, this is not to suggest there isn't anything to learn or adopt in heritage preservation or that it's hopeless, just that economics is the game that features heritage, not the other way around.

So where can better policy play a role? Well - policy helped get Inglewood a suburban-style Spolumbo's/parking lot. Surely a more traditional and true-to-the-character zero-setback, zero-parking retail would have been better. Better yet: a traditional-style lot-line-to-lot line 4 - 6 storey walkup, with Spolumbo's underneath?

In summary, lets do the small things and fight for good design, accepting trade-offs that meet the economics of today (occasional height) and support the community (preserve and integrate heritage assets) - which I think this proposal really does. Meanwhile lets attack bad design, heritage replacement with lower value products - and most importantly all the rules that make building traditional, agreeable main streets so hard in the first place (parking and set-back being the two most obvious ones).
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Thanks for that well though out analysis, I agree completely.

One thing that I think is also relevant is these cities that were much larger than Calgary 100 years ago have multiple layers of historical 'villages' and streetscapes. IE if one gets torn down or gentrified there's always that "run down strip of potential gems" that the cool eclectic businesses can migrate to.. Calgary doesn't really have that. If Inglewood loses its eclectic shopping street, where's the next walkable strip of cheap rental commercial they will move to? There's basically none. Maybe Bowness? Once you get further out the old retail is suburban style with giant parking lots. If Inglewood loses its differentiating aspects it will just be gone.
 
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JoeUrban said:
Thanks for that well though out analysis, I agree completely.

One thing that I think is also relevant is these cities that were much larger than Calgary 100 years ago have multiple layers of historical 'villages' and streetscapes. IE if one gets torn down or gentrified there's always that "run down strip of potential gems" that the cool eclectic businesses can migrate to.. Calgary doesn't really have that. If Inglewood loses its eclectic shopping street, where's the next walkable strip of cheap rental commercial they will move to? There's basically none. Maybe Bowness? Once you get further out the old retail is suburban style with giant parking lots. If Inglewood loses its differentiating aspects it will just be gone.
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Completely agree. All the more reason we should figure out how to build some more and and repair the ones we have let decline or have long stopped from ever reaching their proper pedestrian-focused status.

I lean into the demographics, history and macro-urban economics because that's my interest - there's plenty of other things that need to be considered from a design, project financing, land cost and local market conditions to make a street successful. Optimistically, I think there's enough motivation and understanding of these forces in the development, regulatory and citizen communities now to keep the pressure up and challenge outdated assumptions that prevent good stuff from happening (and start stopping bad stuff from happening).

The battle's an endless marathon though, fought one building or policy at a time with the real impacts and results not known for many years, decades or ever. Calgary has progress a lot in the past decade or two on all these fronts, got to keep getting some wins and really lock in some great urban main streets. Keep fighting the good fight 👍
 
Hail doesn't seem to do much damage in the core, would expect the same in Inglewood. I should look into what the codes are for glass in a high building (anything over 6 storey is a high building by code).
 
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