Breaking ground downtown: A new Canadian trend?
In an earlier post I talked about Vancouver’s newly announced $71 million plans to update their downtown east side into an arts campus with state of the art performance spaces and the like.
I meant to mention this at the time, but it just so happens that one day earlier Montreal made a similar $120 million announcement. This time the announcement is all bout revamping their city’s arts district – a one square kilometre area that will be redubbed Le Quartier des Spectacles. The space will include the Place des Arts and be home to almost every festival Montreal is famous for including Just for Laughs and the Montreal International Jazz Festival.
Wow. Can you imagine having something like that in your city? The area is almost guaranteed to become the heartbeat of the city. With buskers, acts and stage shows ongoing there will always be something to see in that area of town. Plus with the influx of people visiting you know the street level shops will be bustling, restaurants will be busy and everyone in Montreal and around the world will be talking about that spot. Certainly that’s Montreal’s vision. (Heck, the “Lighting Plan” alone is worthy of the world’s attention.)
Apparently the people behind Evergreen in Toronto were listening at the same time too because earlier today they announced a $55 million project to redesign the city’s old Don Valley Brick Works into a world-class green space, complete with heritage buildings and arts programs. The new Evergreen Brick Works will be an urban space unlike anything seen in any other city.
These three projects are the kind of visionary thinking we need to see more of in Canada. Especially Calgary.
So, I reiterate my impatience to see more movement on the Athabasca University, Calgary Board of Education, SAIT Polytechnic, University of Calgary, and University of Lethbridge sponsored Urban Campus Initiative being proposed for Calgary’s own downtown east side. It’s going to take a lot of work to get this project going, but the time is now – before the boom slows to the point the project stalls.
Certainly this is what the world is looking for, and we had best provide it if we want to consider ourselves world-class.
I don’t think $38 million invested in Calgary’s park system is going to do it. (Even though it is a much deserved way to honour our veterans.)
Breaking ground downtown: "extensive community engagement" no one’s heard about
As an update to Wednesday’s post about Calgary’s Urban Campus Initiative I read in the latest issue of U Magazine, U of C’s alumni magazine, where there is a little footnote under their Capital Plan Update page saying:
Following the proposal of a business plan to the province, the Urban Campus Partnership has entered into a phase of extensive community engagement to ensure that all stakeholders have an opportunity to participate in advancing this project.
That’s it. That’s the UofC’s latest public word on this massive project. “Extensive community engagement.” I haven’t heard any word on what this will actually be but it sounds like it’ll be so big we should have heard something by now. That or the project is stalled somewhere in the process.
Breaking ground downtown: A Tale of Two Cities
Well this sure sounds familiar.
While Simon Fraser University, Vancouver and the British Columbia government are putting their money where their mouths are by undertaking a massive downtown arts education campus, Calgary’s similar Urban Campus Initiative appears to have stalled.
The two projects seem similar except there appears to be more of an arts focus in Vancouver and the Calgary project looks like it leans more in the direction of focusing on community. The goals appear to be very much the same however with both having heavy community and arts angles.
So why has the SFU project suddenly picked up steam while the UofC/Bow Valley College/SAIT/University of Lethbridge/Athabasca University/Calgary Board of Education project doesn’t look like its even updated its website since June 2006? (No seriously, this isn’t a rhetorical question. Not like: isn’t involving so many red-tape heavy institutions just asking for trouble?)
Why has such a great project pulled up lame before even getting into the start blocks? According to the CBC report on the Vancouver project the lynch-pin was the Government of British Columbia’s investment. Meantime, the Urban Campus website states Calgary city council agreed to turn the land over if the Alberta provincial government invested. And…? Is this where the hold up is?
I guess it looks like it will take some serious digging to find out what’s going on here in Cowtown.
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