[MichaelS]

I am creating a thread for the Springbank Hill area of Calgary, to capture a place for all of these suburban projects happening in this neighbourhood, discussed a while ago in the General Construction Thread. Some new DPs have been submitted recently, and there is enough activity going on I figure this area deserves its own thread similar to the West District thread or the Trinity Hills thread. And given they are all suburban, not sure if they each need their own thread. One difference to this area is there isn't a single, overall master planning developer, but the recently updated ASP gives good guidance, and most of the area is seeing development activity happening at the same time. Springbank Hill is a large neighbourhood, and this thread is meant to track the denser hub of it, located between 77th Street and 85th Street SW, south of 17th Ave SW. I will update this first post as new project information comes available, to make it a reference for anyone curious to what is going on in the neighbourhood.

Here is a map with a list of the projects in the area, with their status.

1. Arcola Spring Willow - Truman Homes

Arcola Townhomes | Spring Willow | Truman | Springbank Hill S.W Calgary

Arcola - Townhomes in Southwest Calgary from the mid $500’s featuring unique, timeless interior fit and finishes exclusive to Truman.

trumanhomes.com

2. 85th & Park - Cove Properties

DMAP

Home - 85th & Park at Aspen in SW Calgary

New condos in Aspen SW Calgary featuring large 1, 2, and 3 bedroom condos up to 1798 sqft by Cove Properties, Calgary's award-winning builder.

85thandpark.ca

3a. Aspen Spring Townhomes - Slokker Homes

Townhomes - Aspen Spring

aspenspring.ca

3b. Orion Aspen Spring Condos - Slokker Homes

New Condos For Sale in Calgary, 1 & 2 Bed Condos - Aspen Spring

View the floorplans for apartment-style Orion Condos in Calgary's Aspen Spring by Slokker Homes. Find your perfect unit today!

aspenspring.ca

4. Spring Hill Estates - Spray Group

DMAP

Springbank Hill Estates – Spray Group

www.spraygroup.ca

5. The Willows - Truman Homes

The Willows | Truman

Condos in Downtown Calgary - 1-3 bedroom concrete built condos on the corner of 17th avenue and 29th street SW in the heart of the downown core.

trumanhomes.com

6. Wildflower Townhomes - Homes by Avi

Springbank Hill Calgary SW New Homes for Sale | Homes by Avi

Springbank Hill is a large and diverse suburb near the western city limit of Calgary, Alberta in the Southwest quadrant. Get outside and enjoy quick and easy access to the mountains.

www.homesbyavi.com

7. Springbank Hill District - Ronmor

DMAP

Springbank Hill District

Innovative Projects | Diversified Portfolio | Sustainable Design

www.ronmor.ca

8. Ambrose Springbank Hill - Partners

DMAP

9. Cobalt Mixed Use - Slokker Homes

DMAP

10. Elkwood in Aspen Springs - Slokker Homes

DMAP

 

[MichaelS]

I drove by yesterday evening, and took a few photos of the construction progress being made.

Here is #2 on the above map, 85th & Park:

Here is 3a and 3b (background and foreground respectively), Aspen Spring Townhomes and Orion condos (apologies for photo quality)

#5 on the map, The Willows:

And #6 on the map, Wildflower Townhomes:

 

[MichaelS]

For #9 on the list, the Cobalt Mixed Use, I have heard it is pretty substantial. The description says 4 buildnigs, including multi-residential and office. And I think the ASP and Zoning allows for some pretty significant height here (as in, at least 10 storeys) so I hope we can see a rendering soon.

 

[MichaelS]

The DP plans for #9 on the list above are now posted online, and as I heard, it is pretty big.

DMAP

Cobalt Mixed Use I 5s - 15s I 26m - 48m I Slokker Homes I Casola Koppe Architects

4 buildings, one office (5 stories) and 3 residential (11, 12 and 15 stories) all with retail at grade.

 

[haltcatchfire]

That protruding box frame has never been stylish.

 

[DougB]

Has a tentative LRT station been proposed for the area? I would expect it to be in the vicinity of the Cobalt mixed-use proposal

 

[MichaelS]

From the Springbank Hill ASP:

Looks like that would put it about here:

 

[UrbanWarrior]

Crazy how many proposals are coming out the past week.

 

[October]

Id much rather see the station at the intersection of 85th and 17th, trench it below grade just like 69th and you're good.

 

[UrbanWarrior]

Yes it’s quite bizarre that they’d put it between an elementary school and a bunch of SFH instead of adjacent to planned high density and existing retail…

 

[October]

Well its city planning in Calgary, so I mean...

 

[Surrealplaces]

Big density happening on the edge of the city in Springbank Hill and West District. I wish they could replicate these type of developments for places like Anderson Station or Saddletown.

 

[CBBarnett]

Big density happening on the edge of the city in Springbank Hill and West District. I wish they could replicate these type of developments for places like Anderson Station or Saddletown.

I wonder how much of this 85 Street / Springbank Hill density boom is the result of the area absolutely blowing away any comparables on income and housing ownership, combined with an assumed-to-be-soon-limited greenfield land supply in the area?

Springbank just outside the city is one of the wealthiest places in Canada, the inner west edge of Calgary is also in that top 1-5%. With the massive ring road right-of-way, plus the rich-person acreage buffer just beyond, the "easy" land is running out. Seems like that's what Truman and the other developers out here are approaching the area to maximize the potential. Other suburban fringes of the city seem to be no where close in level of density or thinking about how it's designed.

 

[CBBarnett]

Yes it’s quite bizarre that they’d put it between an elementary school and a bunch of SFH instead of adjacent to planned high density and existing retail…

Id much rather see the station at the intersection of 85th and 17th, trench it below grade just like 69th and you're good.

You can see by the right-of-way they reserved that they just assumed the train would keep extending to the west LRT forever and the sprawl pattern would continue. I don't think that's a realistic assumption anymore.

Any extension is probably years/decades away but they might as well revise the plan for an 85 Street SW terminus at 17th Avenue as that's where the real density and activity will be (except those terribly planned storm ponds ). I would also be interested in a 85 Street extension to Truman's development, but even when fully built out it's not likely to be a good value.

An aside on storm ponds, triggered by the 85 Street SW pond:
We have got to starting building these better and build waaay fewer of them. No other province relies so much on storm ponds as we do in suburban areas. It's land consuming madness. Not only does Calgary and Edmonton use these everywhere, we also plan them adjacent the skeletal/arterial transportation network as a "first in" piece of infrastructure. I am sure the water engineers will have their reasons - but every other major city has stormwater issues and water engineers, yet they rarely resort to giant storm ponds the frequency we do next to major intersections. What gives?

Here's the 85 Street and 17 Ave SW intersection in 2003, right before redevelopment began. There was a natural coulee/depression that tracked along the blue line in the aerial image below. Perhaps this could have formed a stormwater stream or series of wetlands? Development completely terraformed the whole area as it is, would it have been too hard to create something that's more of an amenity and less land consuming?

I fully acknowledge that stormwater is important to think about very early in the process, but people/density/transit should be planned for in alignment to major corridors, not ponds. A quick review of the NW, NE and South LRT lines (and their future extensions) and you'll see that sometime around 1990s we decided to make transit-oriented stormponds rather than transit-oriented development.

2003:

2021:

 

[JonnyCanuck]

That Cobalt project from Slokker is pretty ambitious by their standards. I don't know if they have ever done high rises in Calgary before. The one they were supposed to partner on in East Village was really Fram Developments from Ontario.