Chinook Centre second downtown
By Richard White, Calgary HeraldMarch 6, 2010
Love it or hate it, Chinook Centre has evolved into Calgary's other downtown.
By this, I mean Chinook Centre rivals or has surpassed the city's traditional downtown as the place for Calgarians of all ages and backgrounds to shop, browse, stroll and just hang out.
While Market Mall, Southcentre and Sunridge Mall, serve somewhat the same purpose, they are more regional centres. By contrast, Chinook is gradually becoming "centre ice" in Calgary's urban arena.
I have to declare up front that I am not a big fan of shopping centres, but it quickly became obvious how animated and vibrant Chinook Centre was compared to recent trips downtown and to other malls.
The parallels between Chinook Centre and downtown begin at the parking lot, where you have to drive around and around looking to snag a spot.
But as everyone likes to remind me, "at least you don't have to pay when you do find a spot -- and it is nice knowing you can stroll and linger as long as you want without the parking bill increasing every 30 minutes."
To be fair, downtown has plenty of parking evenings and weekends for a toonie. But unfortunately, this fact seems to be overshadowed by horror stories of the weekday ticket you get for being a few minutes late at a meter -- or how it costs $20 to park for a few hours to have lunch and do a bit shopping.
Once inside Chinook Centre, I couldn't help but notice that there were people everywhere. In contrast, other than at rush hour and lunch hour, downtown streets, sidewalks and Plus 15s are pretty empty most of the time.
And why not? After all, people are downtown to work.
The food court at Chinook Centre was like an urban plaza -- a hub of activity. Walking downstairs from the food court, I heard the distant beat of a drum.
It attracted me to wander over to another courtyard where a Chinese dragon dancing demonstration was taking place. I could have been on Stephen Avenue Walk.
While Chinook Centre may not have the traditional downtown Main Street look, with designer banners, lamp posts and benches, its many skylights give it an outdoor streetscape quality.
In fact, shopping at Chinook Centre is not very different than shopping in downtown's Plus-15 system.
While traditional downtown plazas and pocket parks have benches and steps to sit and watch the world go by, Chinook offers clusters of comfy chairs everywhere that serve the same purpose. Someone once said a city's downtown should be its living room. I couldn't help but think that these seating areas are little living rooms.
When it was built 50 years ago, Chinook Centre sat at the edge of the city. Today, it is literally part of our inner city.
No other major North American city I am aware of has its major indoor shopping mall within five kilometres of downtown. Imagine if the West Edmonton Mall was located on Whyte Avenue, or if Vancouver's Metro Town was located at South Granville or Commercial Drive.
Toronto's major mall, Eaton Centre, is right downtown so it actually enhances the downtown experience rather than competing with it.
An argument could be made that Chinook Centre is Calgary's uptown, like Bloor Street is to Toronto's downtown. Uptown is a term used in larger cities referring to a vibrant, upscale, boutique shopping and residential district a few kilometres from downtown.
While Calgary's 17th Avenue calls itself Uptown 17th, in many ways Chinook Centre is taking on the messy, congested, urbanism look and feel that better fits urban guru Jane Jacobs' vision of urban vitality.
Author of 1961's The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs' thesis was that you need plenty of shops with entrances to the sidewalk -- as well as small strategically placed intimate gathering places that are attractive to a diversity of people -- in order to create urban vitality.
Chinook Centre has this under one roof -- a bonus for a winter city like Calgary.
The mall's current expansion will bring it closer to Macleod Trail, better linking it to the street. I can envision a time when there will be no surface parking and the entire area will be one big indoor urban playground, with only underground parking and a dramatic Plus-15 promenade spanning the entire way to the Chinook LRT Station, which will be surrounded by ultra cool office and condo buildings.
The argument that Chinook Centre is Calgary's uptown is further strengthened when you realize it is just three LRT stops from downtown (I combined the two Stampede stops -- do we really need two stops so close?)
This is the equivalent to Dundas Street in downtown Toronto to Bloor Street.
What Chinook Centre is missing, however, are the restaurants, pubs and lounges that are commonly associated with urban places. After we went to a movie at the mall, we tried to get into a nearby restaurant, but it was full.
The mall is also missing the high density residential development that is also associated with uptown communities.
But perhaps we are on to something new and we don't even know it -- that major cities can have more than one downtown. Our traditional downtown focuses on head office and government during the weekdays and cultural activities most evenings and weekends, while our casual downtown (Chinook Centre) is where people relax in blue jeans and Lululemon gear in the evenings and weekends.
Or maybe it is just a winter city like Calgary that needs to have a winter downtown and a summer downtown.
In the summer, our downtown is a much more appealing place, with its patios and vendors on Stephen Avenue Walk, festivals in Prince's Island and plenty of hanging baskets and banners adding colour and charm.
But in the winter, it is a pretty cold, dark place. which is when Chinook Centre serves as our winter downtown.
"Downtown is more than just a corporate ghetto" you cry. "It is also our cultural headquarters -- Epcor Centre; the Grand, Vertigo, Lunchbox and Pumphouse Theatres; the Glenbow Museum; Art Gallery of Calgary; and the Triangle ..."
Agreed, but Chinook Centre has the Scotia Centre Cineplex with its IMAX theatre -- with 16 cinemas and 4,000 seats (compared to the Epcor Centre's 3,200 seats).
With two seatings per night, the cineplex has the capacity to entertain 8,000 people every evening. For many Calgarians, the cinema is the ideal art form, combining the novel, the play, the concert and the visual arts.
After seeing Avatar at the IMAX, I had to wonder (for just a second or two) if people, after experiencing this, will ever go to an art gallery again; the visuals were simply outstanding.
It was interesting to contrast the Avatar experience with the graphic visuals of the PIG: A Back Door Peep Show I saw a few weeks before at One Yellow Rabbit's High Performance Rodeo.
Talk about both ends of the spectrum! Though for me it was great, I think the average Calgarian feels the cinema gives them the best bang for their buck. The fact that the Scotia Centre Cineplex is the number one cinema complex in Canada in terms of attendance tells me my hunch isn't far off the mark.
Times change, cities change.
The emergence of Chinook Centre as part of Calgary's urban place-making is perhaps something that I and other urban snobs in our city need to embrace.
The City planners already have, with the development of the Chinook Station TOD (Transit Oriented Development) Plan.
This plan calls for the densification of all blocks surrounding the station with mixed-use high density housing, offices, medical, retail, restaurant and recreational buildings.
...
http://www.calgaryherald.com/Chinook+Centre+second+downtown/2647974/story.html
Prev
Linear Mode
