[CBBarnett]

Would rather have a better arena on a larger lot than the opera house and smaller arena. Too bad about Fort Calgary, that place has never been able to truly become a main attraction.

Having 4+ competing western-themed heritage parks/forts/museums/stampedes is the root of the issue here I think.

it’s a weird system we have in this province about the western heritage stuff - as all the Calgary ones are dependent on provincial and municipal funding, handshakes and connections, none can really ever deviate from the western-themed, good ol’ Alberta message or risk funding. Similarly times are never tough enough to acknowledge maybe we don’t need so much of the same thing so most get funded to sustain themselves. Always too important (or too much of a headache) to kill; but never important enough to really invest at a meaningful scale to be relevant.

The result is these organization limp along, benefitting or being victim to random budget changes and political machinations, as is the case here - why dole out a few million to limp along a small Fort upgrade and a small opera/stampede upgrade? Might as well concentrate that funding to something more material to see a potential real impact.

Fort Calgary is my pet peeve, considering it’s a restoration, not original and was only created in the 1970s. 2019, before the pandemic they had 25,000 visitors - 65 a day. The river pathway right next door has 10x that at -40. But if anyone proposed a soccer stadium, major music venue or recreation centre on the Fort Calgary Site to diversify and expand the inner city offerings instead of the faux-heritage, it would be immediately rejected.

It’s not that we have too many public facilities and museums, it’s that we don’t have enough diversity in them.

 

[potatopizzafan]

A big outdoor concert venue like the budweiser stage in Toronto would be amazing at the fort calgary site.

 

[Duck Lightning]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1665018000553000961

 

[darwink]

before the pandemic they had 25,000 visitors - 65 a day

Been a long time since I was in their annual reports — does this include school field trip groups? Places are inconsistent on that.

 

[CBBarnett]

Been a long time since I was in their annual reports — does this include school field trip groups? Places are inconsistent on that.

Inclusive of students I think - some 6,200 of the 25,000 were students.

 

[IceCreamMan]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1666211449663000579

Just announced: The $40M Olympic Plaza Transformation, being led by CMLC.
https://www.calgarymlc.ca/news-full/olympic-plaza-transformation-announcement

 

[Duck Lightning]

The original decision in council yesterday was reconsidered today in a 10-5 vote. And the revised motion was passed in a 14-1 vote (Chu opposed) with 2 new recommendations added.

Calgary city council changes course, charts plan to review housing recommendations - LiveWire Calgary

Calgary city council has reversed its decision on the housing task force recommendations, after a reconsideration vote, paving the way for further work on the housing file. The reconsideration vote was done during a continuation of Tuesday’s regular meeting of council after the lunch hour...

livewirecalgary.com

 

[badc0ffee]

A) Is there a housing crisis in Calgary, or is that just Walcott being Walcott?

B) Can someone summarize what this is all about? I'm kind of lost. For example the city rejected the city-wide adoption of R-CG yesterday, but is that part of what survived in the revised recommendations?

 

[outoftheice]

A) Is there a housing crisis in Calgary, or is that just Walcott being Walcott?

B) Can someone summarize what this is all about? I'm kind of lost. For example the city rejected the city-wide adoption of R-CG yesterday, but is that part of what survived in the revised recommendations?

The 33 recommendations from the Task Force yesterday were killed by Council's no vote. Then last night some of the No people started to realize that their vote had killed all work on housing affordability because the recommendations by Administration were actually separate things from the 33 recommendations made by the Task Force and it's the Admin recommendations they voted on.

As pressure started to build today thanks to prominent federal politicians belonging to both major parties, the No votes reversed course and asked for a reconsideration of their vote and then tweaked the Administration recommendations that they were voting on. All that to say, a large number of the uncontroversial Task Force recommendations will begin to move forward over the summer and a new report will come to Committee (not Council) on Sept 14, 2023 that will talk about implementation of all 33 ideas. Because it will be at Committee, it will allow the public to comment on the 33 Task Force recommendations, which is what some of the No votes wanted to see. Council can then delete things out of that report at committee, such as the RC-G blanket zoning, before the report becomes official City of Calgary policy.

As Cllr Mian said today, this essentially just delayed a decision by 3 months and created a bunch more red tape around the process but at least the conversation is moving forward instead of being stopped dead in its tracks like it was yesterday.

 

[Duck Lightning]

This is what was voted on​

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1666544520899743744

Items 3 and 4 were added today​

 

[Surrealplaces]

Urban development abound! Looking at these two pics, makes me wish the Chumir was built at the west end of the lot, and the eastern portion turned into park. It would still have 4th street running through it, but they could have put in some on the park restos along 4th.

 

[darwink]

Urban development abound! Looking at these two pics, makes me wish the Chumir was built at the west end of the lot, and the eastern portion turned into park. It would still have 4th street running through it, but they could have put in some on the park restos along 4th.

Take it for what it’s worth, but I was told Chumir is conceived to constantly trade ‘sides’ of the site and grow over a very long timeframe. There is a practical limit for hospitals when the support services on lower floors growing end up meaning adding an additional upper floor doesn’t add much usable space.

Upon hearing this the half the site, but somewhat taller design made sense.

 

[badc0ffee]

Thank you @Duck Lightning and @outoftheice

CBC has this about the comments from MPs:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-council-affordable-housing-density-nimby-poilievre-1.6869177

 

[ByeByeBaby]

A) Is there a housing crisis in Calgary, or is that just Walcott being Walcott?

There absolutely is. It's not as bad as Vancouver or Toronto, but almost all of the solutions to housing affordability are not overnight solutions, they take years to implement, so it's important to act quickly to try and avoid things getting worse.

As of the 2021 census, about 35% of renter households in the Calgary CMA are cost burdened (spend over 30% of their income on housing); it's about 38% in Vancouver and 40% in Toronto, but 28% in Montreal.

But asking rents are spiking through the roof. I track the rent prices on Rentfaster occasionally. In particular, I've been tracking two bedroom units with 1.5 or more bathrooms and insuite laundry and a dishwasher (the appliances tend to exclude the run-down 1960s cheap rental properties). Here's the distribution of asking rents in the inner city (20th Ave N to 40 Ave S; 33 St W to Deerfoot) in April 2018, April 2021 and June 2023:

And here's the same thing for suburban units (ie outside the inner city, including Airdrie, Okotoks, Cochrane, Strathmore):

The median prices went up 8% inner / 4% suburban between 2018 and 2021; they've gone up 31% inner / 38% suburban between 2021 and 2023. I suspect that when suburban prices rise faster than inner city ones it's people being priced out of the inner city.

Two years ago, $2000 per month would get you an above-average unit (60th percentile) in the inner city; now that same price will get you a well below average unit (30th percentile) in the suburbs; to rent a similar unit today you'd need $2650 per month.

 

[CBBarnett]

There absolutely is. It's not as bad as Vancouver or Toronto, but almost all of the solutions to housing affordability are not overnight solutions, they take years to implement, so it's important to act quickly to try and avoid things getting worse.

As of the 2021 census, about 35% of renter households in the Calgary CMA are cost burdened (spend over 30% of their income on housing); it's about 38% in Vancouver and 40% in Toronto, but 28% in Montreal.

But asking rents are spiking through the roof. I track the rent prices on Rentfaster occasionally. In particular, I've been tracking two bedroom units with 1.5 or more bathrooms and insuite laundry and a dishwasher (the appliances tend to exclude the run-down 1960s cheap rental properties). Here's the distribution of asking rents in the inner city (20th Ave N to 40 Ave S; 33 St W to Deerfoot) in April 2018, April 2021 and June 2023:
View attachment 483733
And here's the same thing for suburban units (ie outside the inner city, including Airdrie, Okotoks, Cochrane, Strathmore):
View attachment 483734
The median prices went up 8% inner / 4% suburban between 2018 and 2021; they've gone up 31% inner / 38% suburban between 2021 and 2023. I suspect that when suburban prices rise faster than inner city ones it's people being priced out of the inner city.

Two years ago, $2000 per month would get you an above-average unit (60th percentile) in the inner city; now that same price will get you a well below average unit (30th percentile) in the suburbs; to rent a similar unit today you'd need $2650 per month.

Fantastic use of data here @ByeByeBaby - illustrates the crisis very well. Where/how did you collect this data? Is the underlying dataset publicly available or one you've cobbled together?

What's interesting to me is this post-Covid pop in rents/housing asset prices hasn't seemed (anecdotally) to trigger of flood of new apartment projects - part of that might be too soon, part of it might be that as rents have increased, costs and financing have as well so new building doesn't have any better margins than before. Either way I am surprised we aren't seeing too many larger-scale projects start making their way into the pipeline yet.