Whose woes is Calgary’s downtown plan addressing?
Almost three years in, the plan's cracks are starting to show.
The City of Calgary strives for a downtown that’s a vibrant 24/7 destination — brimming with shoppers, diners, and flâneurs. To achieve this vision, the Greater Downtown Plan set out a roadmap (and a $200 million budget) nearly three years go.
At the time, transforming 6-million square-feet of vacant office space into residential units was presented as one of many components of a holistic strategy that would include much-needed upgrades to the public realm and transportation.
But somewhere along the way, office-to-residential conversions became the primary focus of the strategy, a novel idea for cities around the globe to emulate. As a result, the onus of making our city’s downtown a vibrant place to live now seems to rest on the shoulders of new residents, and their capacity to lure further investment on everyday services and amenities.
Last week, Thom Mahler, the director of the downtown strategy, told CBC that providing the amenities downtown residents need is up to the private sector. “Developers understand the need for those amenities to convince someone to sign a lease.”
But, do they?
After all, our city’s core ended up the way it is now because developers did what they deemed best at the time. Today, a handful of developers are set to receive from Calgarians a subsidy of $75 per square-foot to convert vacant office space into residential — why leave it to the market to fulfill the basic needs of future residents?
As the handful of facilities serving the less glamorous needs of over 40,000 residents in the greater downtown area have struggled to stay afloat in the face of sky-high office vacancy, our city’s leadership seems to have opted to treat the former as a natural occurrence, and the latter as an issue requiring prompt government intervention.
When the last remaining recreation centre in the downtown core, the Gray Family Y, closed its doors forever in February 2021 — just two months prior to the release of the Greater Downtown Plan — the city’s response wasn’t much more than a shrug. (In case you’re wondering, the Y is slated to become a mixed-use tower.)
Across from the derelict Y sits the Eau Claire Market, which after three decades of wrestling with high vacancy rates, is slated for demolition in the spring.
Despite the demise brought about by the latest downturn, both facilities used to fulfill important needs for the area’s growing population: a convenience store and a used bookstore; a movie theatre and a food court; a gym and swimming pool; a daycare; an indoor playground; washrooms.
With an ambitious strategy at hand, investment in the adjacent public realm, and an LRT station in the works — why wouldn’t the city support these ill-fated facilities too, and allow them to remain in operation until results of these investments materialize?
For once, Calgary could have had an LRT station that’s more than a transitional space transit riders can’t wait to escape.
Instead, incentives have flowed to office building owners and developers to turn vacant office space into windowless apartments in an area increasingly devoid of services and amenities. Seemingly, our city’s leadership is betting on a hot rental market and limited choices for prospective tenants.
But if the market fails to provide the services and amenities residents require in a timely manner, the minute tenants can afford to move elsewhere, they will. And the so-called blight of our city’s downtown will return, as it has done each and every time the economy falters.
I can’t help but wonder if focusing on the other aspects of the downtown plan would have been a more cost-effective course of action; an approach more likely to produce sustainable results. I wonder if striving to attract a different kind of tenant to vacant office space, instead of aiming to artificially eliminate it, would have served Calgarians better. A plan to replace headquarters with mom-and-pop shops, daycares, walk-in clinics, artist studios, and non-profits — not as fun pop-ups to bolster property values, but as permanent additions to the downtown community.
Perhaps investing first in amenities and services for residents would have made the conversion of office buildings to residential a more attractive endeavour developers could undertake without a subsidy. This is, after all, what the city does already via programs such as Main Streets or local area planning.
If our city’s leadership has no choice but to support private interests, why not do it in a way that ensures the delivery of a better city, for more people, in the long term?
Calgary remains the poster-child for office-to-residential conversions, quenching our city’s thirst for global attention. But as funding to subsidize building conversions dries out, our city’s downtown could become a cautionary tale. Time will tell.
Reluctantly yours,
Ximena.