So today the city had sort of an open house at Parkland Mall, so I got a chance to ask some questions about future development.
What I learned is that the downtown action plan, yeah the one that shows all those nifty highrise condos is really iffy. The hotel and convention centre is off the table unfortunately, according to the project director, the site will instead become residential, with a max of around 4 stories, most likely wood frame
The Railyards project (around Superstore) which is just north of the project mentioned above, apparently won't get off the ground much for another 15-25 years, by then high-rise construction is only plausible, it may end up being more 2-4 story wood frame construction, but it could generate some 10-15 story structures, which the director said would be around 15-20 years from now. The hurdles to overcome is that developers are more interested in the south east corner of the city, which is growing like a fertilized weed. The second issue is that people in Red Deer are preferring to live on the edge of the city in a more suburban area, and are uninterested in downtown properties, furthermore, they have little to no issue with driving the distance from the south east corner to the city core/north west where most people are employed.
Some good news however is that the downtown cheese factory that I mentioned a while back is indeed going to be a 10 story high-rise
Only about 100 feet, but I'll take it. So far it seems it will be finished in mid to late 2015. I'll see about getting a few progress shots of it and posting them here if anyone's interested.