Before everyone get's too excited for Myriad, remember that a DP for a surface parking lot was recently approved at this location as well (despite what I thought was pretty clear policy in the Beltline ARP prohibiting new surface parking lots)......
Oh look, the City continues to fold like a cheap lawn chair when it comes to city building and good planning while allowing garbage as an "interim use". Half of this city as it sits is an interim use. God forbid it remain a cheap retail building with interesting tenants that they put some lipstick on like the Tigerstedt Block. Nope, push the retail tenants out and put in a gravel parking lot, what horseshit.
But in the interest of trying not to just complain and provide a more interesting alternative for an interim use: work with interesting retail groups and paint the individual retail bays interesting colours and do cool handmade looking signage, add lighting features like string lights and planter boxes and benches out front. Maybe let some BUMP artists do something interesting on the sides and back of the building. Add some woods and warm materials in certain locations.
Something like this:
Rent out the upper floors for things like artist lofts and have interesting pop-up and retail and food tenants and allow them to add planters, cool signs or whatever else to make for an interesting pedestrian and shopping experience.
Treat it like old converted shopping streets like Kensingston Market or Roncesvalles in Toronto.
Sort of like a version of this:
The landowner doesn't seem like creative thinkers who can make an interesting deals come to life and ,make a cheap, cheap re-envisioning of this block happen, i hope they prove me wrong and don't make this a parking lot. Find some interesting tenants, make some good deals with TI Allowances and have flexibility in design, create a vision and execute on something. Frankly, this lack of vision or creativity from many of Calgary's landlords and owners of commercial properties, who would rather tear down a functional, street-oriented building without ever having tried anything but painting it beige and letting it fall apart is what keeps us from having interesting urbanism in our core. You have new apartments going in across the street, do you think they would generate more revenue with a funky shopping strip from those residents or a parking lot?