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Old Posted Jun 13, 2011, 4:02 PM
You Need A Thneed's Avatar
You Need A Thneed You Need A Thneed is offline
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Location: Castleridge, NE Calgary
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Rebuilding the road isn't the problem. It's the surrounding properties that would be affected, the utilities that would have to be moved, etc.

There's so many factors that estimating costs and considering feasibility don't really have value unless you are looking at a specific site.

If there is a building where you want the road to go, it would obviously require removing that building. If the land is still empty, it would still require the land to be purchased, and perhaps swapped with the city.

If there's many utilities under the road, with lots of connections to other buildings, it would really be a logistical nightmare to move a road.

The situation reminds me a little bit of the BOW tower in Calgary, although the road was not moved. Google maps shows the permanent bridge, which the public will never suspect as being a bridge when the development is complete. The road could likely have moved here, had they wanted to, the limited distance to use allowed no discussion of moving the road to ever happen.

In this case, the company building the tower, bought the public street in an agreement with the city, with the condition that the road would be built there again (with parkade underneath) and would be open to the public. The road was closed for about a year, and has been open to the public ever since, with construction happening on both sides of the road, as well as underneath.

I think the only real way to get what you propose done would be for the developer to own all of the affected land, and then make a similar agreement with the city in question.