It is a staggeringly ambitious plan. Given the situation, it had to be.
When the economy started slumping in 2015, office vacancies in downtown Calgary began to climb. By 2020, the vacancy rate was sitting at over 30 per cent — about 14 million square feet of office space sat empty.
The value of office buildings in the city’s core had plummeted by more than two-thirds over that period, gutting the city’s property tax base and creating a revenue crisis at city hall.
Something had to be done.
That something turned out to be the city’s Downtown Office Conversion Program, which set a goal of removing six million square feet of vacant office space by 2031 and increasing the downtown population by 20 per cent in the process.
With a start-up fund of $200 million — and a goal of investing $1 billion over the duration of the program — the city offered developers a sped-up approval process and, more importantly, $75 per square foot in incentives to convert empty office towers into residential apartment buildings.
To date, there are 17 conversion projects in the pipeline, 13 of which are active. These projects will result in the conversion of 2.3 million square feet of office space. Uptake of the program by developers has been so strong that the city announced a pause in October to secure additional funding to meet demand.
But without taking anything away from the grand ambitions of the Calgary plan, or the initial success it’s seen (it isn’t easy to convert one empty office block into apartments, let alone six million square feet worth), there are a few questions that need to be asked on behalf of the future residents of the 2,300-plus new homes about to be built. For example: What are they going to do there?
Where will they buy their groceries or meet friends for a coffee? Where will their children go to school?
When they step out the front door on a weekend morning, staring down the empty, cavernous expanse of Sixth Avenue, or Fifth Avenue, or Fourth Avenue, where will they direct their feet? (And if your answer was — like the line in the song — “to the sunny side of the street,” you haven’t spent much time in downtown Calgary.)
Beverly Sandalack is a professor at the University of Calgary’s School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, and she’s a co-director of the university’s Urban Lab.
Sandalack says that, starting in the mid-1960s, a massive amount of effort, planning and money went into changing the form and function of Calgary’s downtown. Eventually, it lost its human scale, residential population, vitality, sense of safety, and most of its sunshine. An equal amount of effort, she says, will be required to turn it back into neighbourhoods once again.
“Improving the downtown will require radical strategies,” Sandalack said.
Saturday morning on Eighth Street S.W. Downtown resident Paul Fairie says sometimes the city core can feel like an ‘ambiguous, empty space.’ (Jim Brown/CBC)
So, what radical strategies are the city contemplating?
“Maybe radical is not the right word to use, but the public that’s moving into the downtown is different than the public that was there,” said Thom Mahler, the director of the city’s downtown strategy.
Mahler says the Greater Downtown Plan, approved by city council in 2021, provides a variety of options to turn the downtown back into more of a neighbourhood-focused place, removing some of the historical emphasis on the business function of the core.
That includes changes to everything from streets to public spaces and other civic amenities.
Making changes to downtown streets, particularly the wide, one-way avenues that bisect the city from east to west and essentially create an after-hours dead zone between Eighth Avenue in the south, and the Bow River to the north, will be a priority, said Mahler.
“What do you do long-term with Fourth, Fifth, Sixth Avenue? Ninth Avenue? Those are the four biggies,” he said.
“How do you reimagine what those can be in the future?”
Something that makes this easier, he says, is the realization that those streets no longer need to do the things they did in the past, when everyone came downtown at the same time, and left together, resulting in incredible peak-traffic volumes.
“With the change in the way people work, we typically now only have a peak on maybe Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. But even then, people don’t all arrive at the same time and leave at the same time as they used to,” said Mahler.
Flexible streets
The city is now assessing just how much of that extra-wide pavement is required to meet the new demands.
“Where that settles, you can start taking bits away and adding to the public spaces for those other types of mobility, like bicycles, better transit facilities, but also programming lanes of traffic that aren’t used during peak times,” he said.
One of the options being considered is flexible streets.
“So, maybe we use a lane of traffic during the day, or certain days of the week, but other days of the week it can actually be repurposed for temporary parks or for hospitality patios,” said Mahler.
Sandalack agrees that something needs to be done about the one-way, east-west avenues.
“They’ve completely screwed up the function of that part of the city as an urban area,” she said. “It transforms it into freeways, and there’s real difficulty trying to insert a neighbourhood back into that. So structurally and functionally, they’re really a problem.”
But she doesn’t believe reimagining uses for lanes of traffic goes nearly far enough. She calls it “tinkering.”
“All that tinkering, it’s like coming across somebody who’s got a few broken bones … you don’t just buy them new clothes,” she said.
“When I think about something really radical, an option has to be: do we tear down most of it and start again? To me, that has to be on the table as an extreme option.”
A massive amount of effort, planning and money went into changing the form and function of Calgary’s downtown. An equal amount of effort will be required to turn it back into neighbourhoods once again. (Jim Brown/CBC)
Paul Fairie, the principal co-ordinator of the Downtown Core Neighbourhood Association, also thinks something needs to be done about the big, empty east-west avenues, particularly on the weekends.
“You wind up walking one or two blocks in a row with literally nothing. You’re just walking in this ambiguous, empty space,” Fairie said.
But as a downtown resident for 14 years, he says the items at the top of his wish list are what he calls “the boring things.”
Things like grocery stores, inexpensive restaurants and coffee shops that stay open after 6 p.m.
“A big misconception is, they think, you live downtown, you’re living this sort of glamorous, exotic, party-oriented lifestyle. No. I’m just living in an apartment. It’s a relatively normal life and the more we can do to facilitate that, I think, the better,” he said.
“Normal places are the priorities for me.”
Mahler says most of the items on Paul Fairies’s list will be left to the private sector, but he adds that, while the city doesn’t require those kinds of commitments from the developers involved in the office building conversions, those developers understand the need for those amenities to convince someone to sign a lease. So the city is seeing developers planning for businesses like coffee shops, either on street level or on the second level of the buildings they are retrofitting.
Hotels and students
He says another important piece in creating amenities is that one of the office blocks in the west end of downtown is being converted into a hotel.
“The advantage of having hotels in the west end of downtown is hotels are active all the time and they typically have restaurants that are supported,” he said.
On top of that, Mahler says the city is seeing a lot of interest from post-secondary institutions to move some of their space downtown, and create student housing.
“That’s a whole demographic we’ve never had. And they will drive those public amenities. That’s the coffee shops. That’s the pubs. That’s the more-affordable restaurant options,” he said.
For Sandalack, the everyday urbanism that Paul Fairie talks about — the coffee shops, dry cleaners, daycare centres and so on — can’t happen if the interaction between buildings and streets is wrong, as it is in most of downtown Calgary.
“The buildings have blank walls and very few entries. The sidewalk — the public realm itself — is terrible, so that interface needs to be addressed, and not just in front of one building,” she said.
“So, if you have a residential conversion, and you make it nice in front of the residential conversion, that’s not enough because it needs to be a people-on-the-street kind of place with people walking around and going to different locations.”
Downtown Core Neighbourhood Association co-ordinator Paul Fairie says the new Century Gardens Sports Court has been ‘amazing.’ Thom Mahler, the director of the city’s downtown strategy, says the city is looking at diversified uses for vacant lots and for the many city-owned surface parking lots in the core. (Parks Foundation Calgary)
Another missing piece in the downtown puzzle is amenities geared toward children and teenagers, something that will only be more glaring when the office conversion projects begin to fill up.
According to the city, over 800 children under the age of 14 were living in the downtown core in 2021. Add in the older teens and Fairie says there is a real need for schools and places for young people to hang out.
Mahler acknowledges that elementary and high schools are an issue, since the existing schools surrounding the downtown are all overcapacity.
“It’s a conversation we will be having with schools … private schools, public schools … about additional school capacity within the downtown. I think there’s some interest starting to happen in doing that,” he said.
Fairie says he has high hopes for the office conversion program and the downtown revitalization plans generally. He says he’s already seeing improvements, and points to the new sports park next to Century Gardens as an example.
“That basketball court has been amazing,” he said. “It’s full a lot of the day. You see young people — meaning teenagers — in downtown doing stuff, and that’s great, that sort of activation of spaces like that.”
Rethinking parking lots
Mahler says the city is looking at diversified uses for other vacant lots, like the one next to Century Gardens, and for the many city-owned surface parking lots in the core.
Parking Lot 6, for example, in the west end near the Louise Bridge, has been used for festivals and events over the past couple of years.
“The more we pilot these different kinds of things, it lets us get a sense of which ones are the best ones, what’s really resonating with the local population. And then we can make more permanent plans for permanent investment in some of those spaces,” Mahler said.
Beverly Sandalack says she appreciates the work Thom Mahler and others at the city are doing.
“I think those are all really good ideas … necessary,” she said.
But, returning to her point about the difference between radical change and tinkering, she says it’s not enough.
“We’re trying to remediate what went wrong during that … dismal period. And it’s really, really hard to fix the things that have gone wrong because it costs so much money and the problems are so, so big.”
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, she says.
“There are things that need to be undone, before you can get a city back.”
Montreal Alouettes wide receiver Tyson Philpot has announced he will be out for the rest of the CFL season.
The Delta, B.C., native posted the news on his Instagram page Thursday.
“To Be Continued. Shoutout my team, the fans of the CFL and the whole city of Montreal! I can’t wait to be back healthy and write this next chapter in 2025,” the statement read.
Philpot, 24, injured his foot in a 33-23 win over the Hamilton Tiger-Cats on Aug. 10 and was placed on the six-game injured list the next week.
The six-foot-one, 195-pound receiver had 58 receptions, 779 yards and five touchdowns in nine games for the league-leading Alouettes in his third season.
Philpot scored the game-winning touchdown in Montreal’s Grey Cup win last season to punctuate a six-reception, 63-yard performance.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa sustained a concussion for the third time in his NFL career, leaving his team’s game Thursday night against Buffalo after running into defensive back Damar Hamlin and hitting the back of his head against the turf.
Tagovailoa remained down for about two minutes before getting to his feet and walking to the sideline after the play in the third quarter. He made his way to the tunnel not long afterward, looking into the stands before smiling and departing toward the locker room.
The Dolphins needed almost no time before announcing it was a concussion. The team said he had two during the 2022 season, and Tagovailoa was diagnosed with another concussion when he was a college player at Alabama.
Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel said Tagovailoa would get “proper procedural evaluation” and “appropriate care” on Friday.
“The furthest thing from my mind is, ‘What is the timeline?’ We just need to evaluate and just worry about my teammate, like the rest of the guys are,” McDaniel said. “We’ll get more information tomorrow and take it day by day from here.”
Some players saw Tagovailoa in the locker room after the game and said they were encouraged. Tagovailoa spoke with some players and then went home after the game, McDaniel said.
“I have a lot of love for Tua, built a great relationship with him,” said quarterback Skylar Thompson, who replaced Tagovailoa after the injury. “You care about the person more than the player and everybody in the organization would say the same thing. Just really praying for Tua and hopefully everything will come out all right.”
Tagovailoa signed a four-year, $212 million extension before this season — a deal that makes him one of the highest-paid players in the NFL — and was the NFL’s leading passer in Week 1 this season. Tagovailoa left with the Dolphins trailing 31-10, and that was the final score.
“If you know Tua outside of football, you can’t help but feel for him,” Bills quarterback Josh Allen said on Amazon following the game. “He’s a great football player but he’s an even greater human being. He’s one of the best humans on the planet. I’ve got a lot of love for him and I’m just praying for him and his family, hoping everything’s OK. But it’s tough, man. This game of football that we play, it’s got its highs and it’s got its lows — and this is one of the lows.”
Tagovailoa’s college years and first three NFL seasons were marred by injury, though he positioned himself for a big pay bump with an injury-free and productive 2023 as he led the Dolphins into the playoffs. He threw for 29 touchdowns and a league-best 4,624 yards last year.
When, or if, he can come back this season is anyone’s guess. Tagovailoa said in April 2023 that the concussions he had in the 2022 season left him contemplating his playing future. “I think I considered it for a time,” he said then, when asked if he considered stepping away from the game to protect himself.
McDaniel said it’s not his place to say if Tagovailoa should return to football. “He’ll be evaluated and we’ll have conversations and progress as appropriate,” McDaniel said.
Tagovailoa was hurt Thursday on a fourth-down keeper with about 4:30 left in the third. He went straight ahead into Hamlin and did not slide, leading with his right shoulder instead.
Hamlin was the player who suffered a cardiac arrest after making a tackle during a Monday night game in January 2023 at Cincinnati, causing the NFL to suspend a pivotal game that quickly lost significance in the aftermath of a scary scene that unfolded in front of a national television audience.
Tagovailoa wound up on his back, both his hands in the air and Bills players immediately pointed at him as if to suggest there was an injury. Dolphins center Aaron Brewer quickly did the same, waving to the sideline.
Tagovailoa appeared to be making a fist with his right hand as he lay on the ground. It was movement consistent with something that is referred to as the “fencing response,” which can be common after a traumatic brain injury.
Tagovailoa eventually got to his feet. McDaniel grabbed the side of his quarterback’s head and gave him a kiss on the cheek as Tagovailoa departed. Thompson came into the game to take Tagovailoa’s spot.
“I love Tua on and off the football field,” Bills edge Von Miller said. “I’m a huge fan of him. I can empathize and sympathize with him because I’ve been there. I wish him the best.”
Tagovailoa’s history with concussions — and how he has since worked to avoid them — is a huge part of the story of his career, and now comes to the forefront once again.
He had at least two concussions during the 2022 season. He was hurt in a Week 3 game against Buffalo and cleared concussion protocol, though he appeared disoriented on that play but returned to the game.
The NFL later changed its concussion protocol to mandate that if a player shows possible concussion symptoms — including a lack of balance or stability — he must sit out the rest of the game.
Less than a week later, in a Thursday night game at Cincinnati, Tagovailoa was concussed on a scary hit that briefly knocked him unconscious and led to him being taken off the field on a stretcher.
His second known concussion of that season came in a December game against Green Bay, and he didn’t play for the rest of the 2022 season. After that, Tagovailoa began studying ways where he may be able to fall more safely and protect himself against further injury — including studying jiu-jitsu.
“I’m not worried about anything that’s out of my hands,” McDaniel said. “I’m just worried about the human being.”
NEW YORK (AP) — When her husband turns on the television to hear news about the upcoming presidential election, that’s often a signal for Lori Johnson Malveaux to leave the room.
It can get to be too much. Often, she’ll go to a TV in another room to watch a movie on the Hallmark Channel or BET. She craves something comforting and entertaining. And in that, she has company.
While about half of Americans say they are following political news “extremely” or “very” closely, about 6 in 10 say they need to limit how much information they consume about the government and politics to avoid feeling overloaded or fatigued, according to a new survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and USAFacts.
Make no mistake: Malveaux plans to vote. She always does. “I just get to the point where I don’t want to hear the rhetoric,” she said.
The 54-year-old Democrat said she’s most bothered when she hears people on the news telling her that something she saw with her own eyes — like the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — didn’t really happen.
“I feel like I’m being gaslit. That’s the way to put it,” she said.
Sometimes it feels like ‘a bombardment’
Caleb Pack, 23, a Republican from Ardmore, Oklahoma, who works in IT, tries to keep informed through the news feeds on his phone, which is stocked with a variety of sources, including CNN, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press.
Yet sometimes, Pack says, it seems like a bombardment.
“It’s good to know what’s going on, but both sides are pulling a little bit extreme,” he said. “It just feels like it’s a conversation piece everywhere, and it’s hard to escape it.”
Media fatigue isn’t a new phenomenon. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in late 2019 found roughly two in three Americans felt worn out by the amount of news there is, about the same as in a poll taken in early 2018. During the 2016 presidential campaign, about 6 in 10 people felt overloaded by campaign news.
But it can be particularly acute with news related to politics. The AP-NORC/USAFacts poll found that half of Americans feel a need to limit their consumption of information related to crime or overseas conflicts, while only about 4 in 10 are limiting news about the economy and jobs.
It’s easy to understand, with television outlets like CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC full of political talk and a wide array of political news online, sometimes complicated by disinformation.
“There’s a glut of information,” said Richard Coffin, director of research and advocacy for USAFacts, “and people are having a hard time figuring out what is true or not.”
Women are more likely to feel they need to limit media
In the AP-NORC poll, about 6 in 10 men said they follow news about elections and politics at least “very” closely, compared to about half of women. For all types of news, not just politics, women are more likely than men to report the need to limit their media consumption, the survey found.
White adults are also more likely than Black or Hispanic adults to say they need to limit media consumption on politics, the poll found.
Kaleb Aravzo, 19, a Democrat, gets a baseline of news by listening to National Public Radio in the morning at home in Logan, Utah. Too much politics, particularly when he’s on social media sites like TikTok and Instagram, can trigger anxiety and depression.
“If it pops up on my page when I’m on social media,” he said, “I’ll just scroll past it.”
___
Sanders reported from Washington. David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder.
The AP poll of 1,019 adults was conducted July 29-August 8, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.0 percentage points.
