West Village Concept Plan

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CITYBEAT - CITY OF CALGARY PRESS RELEASE
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- Expo 2017 Not Financially Feasible Under Plan

(Calgary) The West End of Calgary’s Downtown will see a major transformation over the next 25 years, as City Council today approved moving forward with a comprehensive redevelopment plan. The area, comprised of 111 acres and scattered with light industrial uses such as car lots and bus terminals, will eventually become a new downtown mixed-use community and home to more than 12,000 people. “West Village” as the area is now known is located between 11th Street S.W. and Crowchild Trail, and the Bow River south to the CPR tracks.

Mayor Dave Bronconnier announced Council’s decision to redevelop West Village utilizing a financing mechanism called a Community Revitalization Levy (CRL). CRLs are enabled through provincial legislation, and allow for new property tax revenues in a redevelopment area to be pooled for up to 20 years to pay for “up-front” infrastructure improvements that “kick-start” private sector re-development. A CRL is necessary for West Village as the area has significant environmental contamination and major transportation networks would need to be re-routed and re-constructed.

In addition to re-routing the road network and environmental remediation, the West Village Concept Plan calls for enhanced parks and open space, a land bridge connecting a new SunAlta LRT station and users to the river park system, and sites for institutional facilities such as a new Alberta College of Art and Design and a Global Energy Centre.

Mayor Bronconnier noted, “This is some of the most valuable and strategically important land in Calgary: Downtown real estate, right on the Bow River, right next to a new LRT station. It’s a prime location for re-development, but that won’t happen without a comprehensive plan and a CRL – the upfront infrastructure costs are just too large.”

The West Village Concept Plan was unveiled during an Expo Media Update held this afternoon.

In May, The City of Calgary expressed an interest in hosting the 2017 World Expo, with the desire to not only locate the Expo site in West Village but to “lever” both projects. The concept, which has been extensively investigated over the last 5 months, was to use Expo as a means to accelerate redevelopment of West Village, and use land redevelopment to pay for hosting the 2017 Expo. From a planning and development perspective, the two projects were an ideal fit.

Turning to the financial estimates however, a very different perspective emerged.

Mayor Bronconnier said, “As a stand-alone project, using a CRL, West village is viable, and would provide for a net return of somewhere between $72 and $470 Million. However, even with that favourable return, it would not cover the costs of hosting Expo 2017. As a combined project, Expo and West Village, the result would be a net deficit of somewhere between $380 Million and $1 Billion. Therefore, today Council approved moving forward with a redevelopment plan for West village, but that will not include hosting an Expo as we are not prepared to ask taxpayers to cover a potential $1 Billion shortfall.”

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