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Stephen Ave said:
9 minutes to downtown by car? Maybe at midnight when there is no traffic.
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As unlikely as it seems, you can actually do it, even in mid-day. Typically is 10 minutes, and in rush hour about 15 minutes. Going back the other way is usually longer, more like 15 or 20 minutes, but still surprisingly quick.
 
MissingMiddle said:
I'm failing to see the point of having car lanes in the center of this. Emergency vehicle access? Sure. But the only purpose here is to invite motor vehicles to dissect what looks like an otherwise very walkable area.
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I will 100% complain the car lanes will be too wide in the centre once this opens. I can call it now.

This project obviously cares about demonstrating they have parking and car access. Every rendering has parking and vehicles featured prominently. They even put it second of the bullet list of what the project actually is on their website, ahead of what is actually being built:

PHASE 1
  • +/- 346,000 sf
  • +/- 460 underground parking stalls
  • Medical office, residential, retail and restaurant
  • Project budget over $190M
Typical parking stalls are around 300sqft (180sqft for the stall itself + 120sqft each stalls share of ramps, circulation lanes etc.) So to get a sense of the scale here in car infrastructure investment, 138,000sqft of the project's Phase 1 is underground parking (28.4% of the total sqft being constructed). This doesn't include the temporary surface lots in the renderings, so there is additional stalls being provided in Phase 1 beyond what's needed. I don't know what costs are these days, but at $50,000/underground stall that's $23M gone into the parkade in Phase 1 alone.

Do they need this much parking?

I would (unsurprisingly) argue of course no they don't given the location and uses. Perhaps they feel they do need it, especially if they only imagined the traffic of today for the Foothills and not what is possible in the future over the life of the development. It's not particularly transit-oriented yet - given the low frequency of the MAX route - but a few blocks from U of C and across the road from a major employment centre should have been enough to expect many residents and visitors to be easily car-lite.

I also don't know what parking requirements were added by the city ( i.e. were they forced to build this much because of the bylaw? or just didn't bother asking for a relaxation?) Regardless, it's a pretty clear example of the magnitude of investment required to support car infrastructure at this scale.

That said, despite the limitation caused by such a vastly car-oriented approach and investment, the project appears to do a reasonably good job to be more welcoming and reasonable to pedestrians. It's a notably conservative project in that it pulls few innovative punches (in design, land use, parking etc.) and just does 2005 Calgary a bit better, rather than seeks to build 2050 Calgary.
 
CBBarnett said:
I will 100% complain the car lanes will be too wide in the centre once this opens. I can call it now.

This project obviously cares about demonstrating they have parking and car access. Every rendering has parking and vehicles featured prominently. They even put it second of the bullet list of what the project actually is on their website, ahead of what is actually being built:

PHASE 1
  • +/- 346,000 sf
  • +/- 460 underground parking stalls
  • Medical office, residential, retail and restaurant
  • Project budget over $190M
Typical parking stalls are around 300sqft (180sqft for the stall itself + 120sqft each stalls share of ramps, circulation lanes etc.) So to get a sense of the scale here in car infrastructure investment, 138,000sqft of the project's Phase 1 is underground parking (28.4% of the total sqft being constructed). This doesn't include the temporary surface lots in the renderings, so there is additional stalls being provided in Phase 1 beyond what's needed. I don't know what costs are these days, but at $50,000/underground stall that's $23M gone into the parkade in Phase 1 alone.

Do they need this much parking?

I would (unsurprisingly) argue of course no they don't given the location and uses. Perhaps they feel they do need it, especially if they only imagined the traffic of today for the Foothills and not what is possible in the future over the life of the development. It's not particularly transit-oriented yet - given the low frequency of the MAX route - but a few blocks from U of C and across the road from a major employment centre should have been enough to expect many residents and visitors to be easily car-lite.

I also don't know what parking requirements were added by the city ( i.e. were they forced to build this much because of the bylaw? or just didn't bother asking for a relaxation?) Regardless, it's a pretty clear example of the magnitude of investment required to support car infrastructure at this scale.

That said, despite the limitation caused by such a vastly car-oriented approach and investment, the project appears to do a reasonably good job to be more welcoming and reasonable to pedestrians. It's a notably conservative project in that it pulls few innovative punches (in design, land use, parking etc.) and just does 2005 Calgary a bit better, rather than seeks to build 2050 Calgary.
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It astonishes me that people still prioritize parking enough to sink that much money into it, as if there wasn't a better way to invest it.

I've quite literally never heard of a business fail because "there was no where to park."
 
This culture at the City that allows excessive automobility and monsterous amounts of parking as an "interim condition" while Calgary densifies and becomes more urban, but in the mean time still planning for 1970s Houston amounts of parking and automobility is a major failure IMO.

I am genuinely concerned that Phase 1 and the interim surface parking for Phase 2 is basically the final condition for this site. Calgary seems to be the kind of place that is comfortable allowing itself to build to an interim condition that completely compromises good urban design for excessive space and access for cars. This alleged future condition that we say Calgary will be a place that is walkable and compact will absolutely never come if we keep allowing these types of interim conditions and the compromise will always be good urbanism.

As i am aware, in line with the Go Plan and previous planning policy, Shawnessy Shopping Centre around the Transit Stations were intended for mixed-use TOD style development. Big Box development was allowed as an interim condition to help build the City's commercial tax base. What is the final condition of Shawnessy? Big box stores for the foreseeable future until people literally forgot it was ever supposed to be something else. I have a feeling that this will be what happens with this site. Phase 1 will be built out with crazy amounts of parking and terrible urban design, Phase 2 will basically never happen, and 20 years from now we will wonder how we built towers in the park surrounded by a sea of surface parking in the 2020s.
 
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