[jawagord]

Originally Posted by Coldrsx

Passed at Council yesterday I hear.

And look, the City just netted out an extra $200 million in 2020 to pay for all this! Basically we are seeing the last gasp death rattle spending hurrah of a expiring mayor and council whose decade of high downtown taxes and restrictive development policies have arguably driven more businesses away than has been attracted by all their spending on downtown pedestrian bridges, bike lanes, new Library, East Village beautification projects. A bunch of new spending on the Arts Commons and the “event center” will certainly make the City nicer, but really does nothing for attracting businesses to the core and there are far nicer places to live just outside of downtown that will make this office conversion plan a non sequitur. Reading the Herald comments section I think most agree the new spending will be ineffective.

The city has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the new Library, the Telus Convention Center, the Stampede Grounds and Convention Center and even on the municipal building. We are now pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into Arts Commons. The downtown is just one big sinkhole of council dollars, every next hundred million is going to put us over the top. Nothing ever pays off and we are just expected to keep subsidizing this downtown largesse indefinitely.

This is just going to waste a lot of money pushing the council’s misguided agenda. The end result will be massive government expenditures, minimal real economic benefits and much higher taxes for the fewer and fewer remaining taxpayers. The is just repeating all the mistakes made in Detroit, I wish Mary Moran would just go away, everything she touches turns to dust.

Should the City be the developer? For Art Commons, sure. For building residences? I don't think so. Competing with developers who have been denied building permits fosters an atmosphere of distrust. This is one reason the core doesn't have any of the amenities which make downtown living attractive.

There is already so much unused residential space in the downtown and Beltline area. Nenshi - why spend $45 million in taxpayer money to convert empty office buildings into more empty condo buildings?

I'm all for revitalizing the downtown core, however, the 45 million for the the office/resident conversion is being miss allocated. In the East Village there is at least two residential towers not even close to full capacity, Bridgeland has two or three residents coming on line by the end of the year and one in the ground, on top of that there are two or three new buildings in the West core.

https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/co...wntown-calgary

The City of Calgary ended 2020 with a $219.3-million surplus after government aid packages arrived to help cover the pandemic-fuelled revenue crisis for municipalities across Canada. The number is significantly higher than the $98-million surplus that council’s audit committee heard about last week. That’s because that total included the financials from wholly owned subsidiaries, including Enmax. Strictly looking at city operations, the surplus is bigger.

https://www.calgarysun.com/news/loca...2-6317a4ec5854