With developers and landowners still finding their way around the East Village area redevelopment plan (ARP) approved in early March, City of Calgary planners have gone public with the framework for a Beltline ARP that envisions what city documents call "a livable and diverse community with a high-density urban population."

"It's all part of the city's smart-growth philosophy," says senior planner Thom Mahler. "We know we're going to have suburban growth, but we want to make sure that we have opportunities for redevelopment within the inner city."

Bounded by 17th Avenue S.W., the Elbow River, 14th Street S.W. and the CPR tracks, the Beltline includes the neighbourhoods of West Connaught, Connaught Centre, Victoria Crossing and East Victoria.

The draft ARP released at public meetings in mid-April encourages a variety of land uses and building types, including residential and mixed-use areas and the continuation of existing commercial uses that include small-scale retail and light industrial.

File photo by David Lazarowych, Business Edge
Mike Giammarco stands in front of Fairey Terrace, one of the buildings his company has restored.

Mike Giammarco of Giammarco & Co., which owns two heritage buildings in Victoria Park, likes what the plan has to say. The draft ARP encourages the reuse and the adaptation of historic buildings and provides incentives to offset renovation costs. In return for making a historic building part of a new development, for example, a developer may be able to increase a new building's height in return for development space "lost" with the preservation.

He says downtown Calgary may have had a dramatically different - and more interesting - look had this concept been used in the 1970s.

Besides incorporating preservation of the area's heritage buildings, the draft sets targets for integrated green spaces, prioritizes pedestrian traffic and recognizes "no major increase in road capacity, except through the provision of new links such as a connection between Fourth Street S.E. and Olympic Way and new roads in Victoria Park, where required, to facilitate redevelopment of the former CPR lands and the Victoria Park transit facility site."

Jim Coutts says that's a mistake.

A long-time commercial realtor with CIR Realtors, Coutts questions the ARP's approach to transportation.

He wanted a more detailed plan to improve traffic flow on Olympic Way, near the eastern border of the Beltline and on the west side at 14th Street.

Coutts also dislikes the draft's suggestion of running a new LRT line down a street currently used for vehicular traffic and says the plan's overall effort to increase residential density falls short.

Architect Bruce McKenzie, a principal with Calgary's Poon McKenzie Architects, says he likes the draft's attempt to create a long-term vision for the area, but agrees the residential density numbers are too low.

Under the draft, the city would drop the current zoning standards and stipulate floor area ratios (FAR) to guide development on specific parcels. McKenzie says architects and developers prefer FARs as a way to determine site value "because that's the gross buildable area that you can build on that site.”

(A 3 FAR essentially means the developer can develop three times the site's footprint.)

"But we believe the city's baseline density is too low," McKenzie says. "We argue that because the Beltline is one of the last remaining substantial areas in downtown Calgary that has significant owner'-ship and sites that can be developed, we should not err on the side of caution ... we should be more aggressive with our densities."

Under the plan, FARs begin at 3. That's half, or less, of what McKenzie says some of these sites can support. Worse yet, at least from McKenzie's perspective, the draft sets 3 FARs on land now zoned RM7 (for buildings up to 17 stories). That kind of change cuts to the heart of a different matter: Equitability.

Under the draft document, clients who've assembled portfolios of Beltline properties over several years will find themselves severely restricted in their ability to develop those properties.

Some of these sites are beside other highrise condominium projects that proceeded under current rules. "I don't think it's fair to give density to one individual and take it away from another. Whatever you do, it better be equitable," notes McKenzie. "It's about fairness."

Since the public hearings, McKenzie's firm has taken these issues to city planners. It's also initiated a letter-writing campaign to city council.

Although there's no deadline for ARP revisions, Mahler says he's hopeful a revised plan, with input from public meetings and written submissions, will go before the Calgary Planning Commission sometime this summer. From there, it would proceed to council.

And that's why timing is so critical, says McKenzie. Once approved, the ARP earns statutory status, something McKenzie does not want to happen unless densities are raised and equitably delivered.

A vision is one thing - a law is another, says McKenzie. "We just feel that we need more input before they put it into place."

(Joy Gregory can be reached at joy@businessedge.ca)