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This was posted same day last year ;) new proposal for the Beltline

179387
 
Surrealplaces said:
This was posted same day last year ;) new proposal for the Beltline

View attachment 179387
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They sort of look like what I imagine the ultimate form of the west village towers could be, if cidex wasn't the champion of value engineering... Or a much nicer version of the Oxford tower that was proposed.

We are blessed with the ongoing condo/ rental property development, but it would be really something great if we could fill the office vacancies and look towards some new mixed use tall buildings. Where Calgary next was proposed would make a good site for a calgary version of Hudson Yards.
 
An interesting discussion at Council yesterday regarding the "downtown tax shift" (i.e. our fancy office buildings aren't worth as much anymore so we have to make some hard choices of who else should cover the bills). Presentation here. A couple of interesting ideas around the core and it's future development brought to you by CMLC and a variety of downtown :
  • The CBRE doesn't expect a new office building until 2029 at the earliest, all development of significance for the next decade and beyond is about residential, mixed use and institutions (not dissimilar to Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto 1990 to 2010)
  • Current office capacity is estimated at 250,000 workers (160,000 workers currently). Does not include service workers and others.
  • Downtown has 1% of the land, 60% of the office supply, 25% of all jobs
3 recommended actions:
  1. Accelerate urbanization and connectivity (e.g. high density housing, EV, Victoria Park master plan, Greenline etc.)
  2. Expand and enhance tourism, cultural and recreation assets (e.g. arena, BMO, hotels, transit to airport and Banff, riverwalk and pathway network)
  3. Actively support diversity and inclusion (e.g. poverty reduction strategies, affordable housing)
 
Although it would be a bland campus in many ways maybe one of the buildings could be converted and used for ACAD's new facility? I'm thinking something like the Elveden Centre could be somewhat cool, given the building itself has some cool factor.

Aside from anything major like an ACAD or some smaller colleges, any kind of re-purposing of office space would be good.
 
retrofiturbanism said:
If we have a 90,000 worker hole, and therefore a 90,000 commuter hole in the downtown, wouldn't this be a great time to convert some of that road space to bus lanes, bike lanes, extended sidewalks, etc? If we are not attracting workers, and need to attract residents, our perspective has to shift.
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Careful. That's a dangerously good idea you have here.
 
retrofiturbanism said:
If we have a 90,000 worker hole, and therefore a 90,000 commuter hole in the downtown, wouldn't this be a great time to convert some of that road space to bus lanes, bike lanes, extended sidewalks, etc? If we are not attracting workers, and need to attract residents, our perspective has to shift.
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Not exactly, since the parking has been capped at around 30-35,000 for decades iirc.
 
darwink said:
Not exactly, since the parking has been capped at around 30-35,000 for decades iirc.
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I'm not sure what you mean there. Retro's post was about increasing transit and cycling to help increase the amount of people who can commute into the core, probably because of that parking limit. If we increased parking spaces, that's not going to help the amount of traffic that can squeeze into downtown via roads.
 
Cowtown said:
I'm not sure what you mean there. Retro's post was about increasing transit and cycling to help increase the amount of people who can commute into the core, probably because of that parking limit. If we increased parking spaces, that's not going to help the amount of traffic that can squeeze into downtown via roads.
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If you are going to take road capacity away, and not take away parking, the system will be pushed towards failure. Calgary for decades has not removed road capacity as it has developed active transportation and transit, creating a balance instead of setting up fights, and it has served us well.

Calgary does have a policy that restricts the amount of parking in new developments, with a policy goal of keeping the number of parking spots flat to stop the roads from being pushed into failure. The city does this partially by requiring contributions to the parking reserve fund, and then the city decides when and where to build more, but never builds an equivalent number of spots. The city has relaxed this a bit with some new developments but the policy remains.
retrofiturbanism said:
Not really. Almost every new build includes parking with it. Now we have just an insane amount of capacity (parking, road space, etc).
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Including parking does not equal including enough parking to increase overall capacity. Equating reduced overall downtown office vacancy with reduced parking utilization is a misnomer. The market adjust prices to equalize at a similar amount of parking utilization.

The point I was attempting to make was that there is no window of opportunity to make changes now that would be politically unacceptable at other times.
 
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