Utterly arbitrary brain utterances about Calgary

[James Bond Agent 007]

So now I'm in Calgary. Just got here mid-afternoon and haven't had much time to see much, but I'll get started with another of my travel brain droppings threads anyway.

1. Freeway names. I found it humorously ironic the way they named all the highways "[Something] Trail." There's Stony Trail, Deerfoot Trail (the biggest one, I think), Glenmore Trail, Bow Bottom Trail, and probably others. I am fully expecting them, sometime in the future, to name a 12-lane superhighway "Peaceful Brook Trail."

2. The Mahogany Development in SE Calgary. This thing is a really ritzy, cool development, discovered it on Google street maps some time ago and wanted to check it out. My hotel is near it. Some of the condos/apts there even gave me a bit of a Vancouver vibe, especially around Chairman's Steakhouse.

3. Poor jackrabbits. Speaking of the Mahogany development, there is this one undeveloped parcel in the middle of Mahogany surrounded by developed parcels, and this undeveloped lot is slated for some new development (it has a Proposed Land Use Change sign on it), and they've even started scraping off some of the dirt in one corner, but there's still some sagebrush on it. Was walking along the sidewalk next to it and there were these two jackrabbits chomping on the sagebrush. They were quite large, nearly the size of a mid-sized dog. I felt really sorry for these two jackrabbits, their habitat is dwindling down to nothing and who knows how much longer it'll be there? Where will they go when the bulldozers come? All the roads around it are busy, and if they tried crossing them they'd stand a good chance of getting hit by a car. And there doesn't look like much good jackrabbit habitat around that lot anyway. I had this desire to go catch those two jackrabbits and take them somewhere out in a rural area where they'd be safe. Poor guys.

[phone]

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

3. Poor jackrabbits. Speaking of the Mahogany development, there is this one undeveloped parcel in the middle of Mahogany surrounded by developed parcels, and this undeveloped lot is slated for some new development (it has a Proposed Land Use Change sign on it), and they've even started scraping off some of the dirt in one corner, but there's still some sagebrush on it. Was walking along the sidewalk next to it and there were these two jackrabbits chomping on the sagebrush. They were quite large, nearly the size of a mid-sized dog. I felt really sorry for these two jackrabbits, their habitat is dwindling down to nothing and who knows how much longer it'll be there? Where will they go when the bulldozers come? All the roads around it are busy, and if they tried crossing them they'd stand a good chance of getting hit by a car. And there doesn't look like much good jackrabbit habitat around that lot anyway. I had this desire to go catch those two jackrabbits and take them somewhere out in a rural area where they'd be safe. Poor guys.

Fear not! The hares aren't going anywhere. They are perfectly adapted to Western Canadian suburban life! Like crows, squirrels, etc... You see them everywhere here. You see, the thing about rabbits is that they procreate like rabbits.

[James Bond Agent 007]

OK, today was my "extensive walking through downtown Calgary" day. I spent hours walking around and am exhausted. Here's my observations...

3. The downtown mall (and to a lesser extent, the skywalks). This might be a bit of an unusual thing to marvel at, but coming from the US nowadays ... it is. I spent a considerable amount of time walking through "The CORE" downtown mall. For those unfamiliar, it's this thing here. The reason why it's a thing to marvel at is because ... it was nearly fully leased and occupied! It was the middle of the day on a weekday, and it was filled with people shopping (I myself went to Simons and bought a $90 jacket). There were only a few vacant storefronts. It was generally thriving. If it was anywhere in the US possibly excepting midtown Manhattan, Chicago's Magnificent Mile, and maybe some hoity-toity smaller downtowns in southern California and Florida, it would be half empty, struggling, and what stores were there would be constantly fending off shoplifters. I truly felt like I was in an upscale US mall circa 1992 or thereabouts. There weren't even any B-grade stores as far as I could tell, it was all A-grade stuff.

If any of our Seattle forumers read this, you really need to take a visit to Calgary sometime, if you haven't already. Seattleites have been complaining in recent years about the declines of Westlake Center and Pacific Place. This mall in Calgary is what those two should be ... and used to be, in the early 90's or so. In fact, the whole retail vibe I got downtown reminded me a lot of Seattle in that era ... which is a good thing.

Even the skywalk's stores were, for the most part, decently occupied (that is, in places where there were stores, much of it was just hallways between buildings). Not everywhere, of course, but where it counted, it was doing pretty well. There were upscale women's and men's fashion stores in at least one part of the skyway (near the mall), which you would never ever ever ever see anymore in a skywalk or similar structure in the US. The (small) underground tunnel system in Seattle, which was still doing OK in the early 90's, started dying soon after that and, I believe, is now gone. If it were in Canada it would still be doing just fine.

In fact, all this dovetails on a couple of malls I visited when I was in Winnipeg. When I was in Winnipeg I wandered into the Polo Park mall and the outlet mall near the western end of the city. If the outlet mall was in Kansas City, it would have been closed from lack of business and torn down long ago (in fact, there was an outlet mall in Johnson County which met exactly that fate several years ago). And a mall like Polo Park would have a lot of B-grade stores, which Polo Park mostly did not.

Even the strip malls I've managed to wander into didn't seem to have too many vacancies. Some, but not that many.

I'm convinced the retail vacancy rate in Canada must be about 1/3 that of the US's. I know Canada has its share of dead malls, but at least from what I've seen in Winnipeg and Calgary, its problems in that regard aren't nearly as bad as the US's.

This is probably a entire separate subject here in SSP's City Discussions section ... and if it already isn't, there should be economics PhD theses written on this topic. There's a huge glaring different between the health of (physical) retail in Canada vs the US, and the Big Question is ... why?

... more ...

[James Bond Agent 007]

4. The obviously imminent Vancouverization of Calgary. As I've said elsewhere, I've been to Vancouver many times and am quite familiar with it. It's really obvious that both the far eastern and far western ends of downtown Calgary are starting to "Vancouverize" with very "Vancouveresque" highrise condos and apartments. But for now both areas still have tons of parking lots and the highrises still look like so many anomalous things sprouting up in the middle of nowhere (maybe less so on the east side). There were parts south of the railroad tracks that looked like that as well. It seems clear to me this is the plan, and that in 30 years or so the skyline of downtown Calgary will look similar to what downtown Vancouver looks like now.

5. The Calgary Tower. I know this is one of Calgary's iconic landmarks, but seriously, it's starting to get buried. Already north and (sort of) west of it is a wall of skyscrapers that dwarf it. To the south it's still pretty unobstructed, but per #4 above the day will come when it's surrounded by towers taller than it to the north, east, west and south. And when that days comes ... what will be the point of it? Personally I think it's rather bleh looking. I was thinking they should turn the current orange thing at the top into maybe a glass ball with a fancy restaurant or something in it, but then double its size and at the new top put a new observation dome.

[James Bond Agent 007]

6. The homeless. It seemed there were probably as many, if not more, homeless in downtown Calgary as in downtown Winnipeg. However, they were clearly distributed differently. In Winnipeg they concentrated around the north end of downtown: The Exchange District, Portage Ave and north of downtown (especially along Main St). In Calgary they seemed more dispersed. In Winnipeg, this had the effect of making one a bit uneasy walking through the north end of downtown, since there were so many concentrated in a smaller area. In Calgary it was just a homeless person here and there, not anything particularly disconcerting.

[James Bond Agent 007]

Originally Posted by phone

Fear not! The hares aren't going anywhere. They are perfectly adapted to Western Canadian suburban life! Like crows, squirrels, etc... You see them everywhere here. You see, the thing about rabbits is that they procreate like rabbits.

Well, that may be true about jackrabbits as a whole, but in this case I really felt sorry for those two particular jackrabbits. Poor guys are probably doomed. In fact I did see a dead jackrabbit on Macleod Trail today.

[James Bond Agent 007]

7. Skyline money shot. Speaking of Macleod Trail, I think the real money shot of Calgary's skyline is not the well-known view from the viewpoint along Crescent Rd NW, north of downtown, but rather, I think the best view of the skyline is probably from this pedestrian bridge here. And a major reason for that is because the Crescent Rd viewpoint faces south, so you get the sun backlighting the skyline. The pedestrian bridge is south of downtown, so you're looking north and the sun is in front of the skyline. Those always make for better skyline views.

[James Bond Agent 007]

8. Cars. Calgary is clearly a much wealthier city than Winnipeg. I saw four Porche 911's in or near downtown, two of which appeared within about 10 minutes of each other, and the first of which was driving right behind an Aston Martin. Don't think I saw any in Winnipeg.

[Wigs]

As another forumer stated, the jackrabbits/hares are EVERYWHERE. They live and hangout in suburban neighbourhoods all over Calgary, and have a wide reach across the Canadian prairies. Coming from southern Ontario where we just have the common Eastern cottontail rabbits, the White-tailed jackrabbits of the Prairies were amazing to watch at top speed (allegedly up to 45mph in bursts).

I was in Calgary to witness the transformation of The Core and Devonian Gardens. The huge skylight made a dramatic difference.
Did you walk around the indoor gardens? Since the trees, shrubs, plants have matured it probably looks nicer now. It was too new and sterile when it was first reopened.

Both the city and Metro of Calgary is larger than Winnipeg by hundreds of thousands of people. Calgary CMA is over 600k larger than Winnipeg CMA!

Calgary Tower is so squat because it's from 1960. Calgary was still "cow town" then before the endless influx of newcomers, multimillionaire class, and the huge skyscrapers were built. It was economical instead of elegant like Seattle's iconic Space Needle.
In stark contrast, Toronto's CN tower was built in the mid 1970s when Canada was really hitting its stride and Toronto was showing the world it wanted to be admired.

Polo Park has been Winnipeg's flagship mall probably since it opened. For Calgary, Chinook Centre is the largest and busiest mall.

What else is on your itinerary?

[James Bond Agent 007]

I also have a question about Calgary for the Canadian forumers: Granted you can't really tell something like this just by looking at it, but as far as I could tell, the business activity downtown seemed ... I dunno, normal - as in not particularly dominated by any one thing. Does anyone know how much of the employment in downtown Calgary is still related to the oil industry?

[James Bond Agent 007]

Originally Posted by Wigs

Did you walk around the indoor gardens? Since the trees, shrubs, plants have matured it probably looks nicer now. It was too new and sterile when it was first reopened.

Yes I did, that was a very nice aspect about it. The vegetation was pretty large, I didn't even know it was a recent add-on, it certainly didn't look that way.

What else is on your itinerary?

Tomorrow I'm going to Canmore and maybe Banff. Since I'm so exhausted from so much walking today I'm going to relegate tomorrow to be a "driving day."

[Innsertnamehere]

Regarding Retail - the US has about 50 square feet of retail space per capita.

Canada? 16 square feet.

And US median disposable income is pretty similar to Canada - it's grown a bit bigger of a gap in the last 5-10 years but historically it was very similar. If disposable incomes directly correlated with retail floor areas, Canada would be 16 square feet and the US would be like 20 square feet. Especially in a City like Calgary which has above-median incomes for Canada and incomes generally in alignment with most middle-income US cities.

The US is simply wayyy over retailed which is why there are such crazy vacancy levels. Canada never overbuilt its retail environments like the US did.

The US particularly went absolutely nuts with both shopping malls in the 1980's/1990's then strip malls in the 2000's.. every town is littered with former malls and massive underutilized retail plazas. Canada has its own share of those, but on a much smaller scale as it was never overbuilt as much in the first place.

[James Bond Agent 007]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

Regarding Retail - the US has about 50 square feet of retail space per capita.

Canada? 16 square feet.

Though I'm not doubting your statistics, honestly, just looking at the landscape here, it doesn't look any different than in the US. Same amount of stores it looks like, just as many, if not more, malls, etc. Maybe I'm not taking into account population density, or something.

In Winnipeg I was stunned to learn that there are 3 large malls (Polo Park, Outlet Collection and St Vital) and a couple smaller ones (Kildonan Place and Garden City). In KC there is basically Oak Park, Zona Rosa and The Plaza (which is basically a mall even though it isn't). All 3 of the KC malls have lots of empty spaces excepting maybe Oak Park, though Oak Park gets by with having a lot of B-grade stores. Both of the Winnipeg malls I went into were basically full, and I've read St Vital is like Polo Park.

But Winnipeg is about half the size of KC.

[phone]

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

Well, that may be true about jackrabbits as a whole, but in this case I really felt sorry for those two particular jackrabbits. Poor guys are probably doomed. In fact I did see a dead jackrabbit on Macleod Trail today.

Deeead skunk in the middle of the road

Yeah, some of them are doomed... but then again, so is your typical seagull.

[phone]

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

This is probably a entire separate subject here in SSP's City Discussions section ... and if it already isn't, there should be economics PhD theses written on this topic. There's a huge glaring different between the health of (physical) retail in Canada vs the US, and the Big Question is ... why?

... more ...

I have two theories as to why:

1. It gets cold in Canada! People want somewhere warm they can hang out inside for free during the winter.

2. Canada doesn't have the population density of the US, meaning that for many people online shopping isn't as convenient an option as it is stateside. So you end up seeing more (particularly rural) people shopping at brick and mortar retail (including malls) than you might in the US.

I have no evidence to back this up lol

[Wigs]

James Bond, while I don't know how much of downtown Calgary is still reliant on Oil & Gas jobs, I can tell you that the downtown office vacancy rate isn't like the boom times. It currently sits around 26-27% overall, down from a peak vacancy rate of around 34% in 2021. So 1/4 of the space in those office buildings are vacant. The newer buildings with Class A or even sometimes differentiated as Class AA office space would typically have less vacant space than older structures. Particularly older structures that haven't been rejuvenated.

Some older office buildings have/or are in the process of being converted to residential/mixed use.

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

Yes I did, that was a very nice aspect about it. The vegetation was pretty large, I didn't even know it was a recent add-on, it certainly didn't look that way.


Tomorrow I'm going to Canmore and maybe Banff. Since I'm so exhausted from so much walking today I'm going to relegate tomorrow to be a "driving day."

Devonian Gardens was built in 1977 but closed and completely overhauled for a few years and reopened in 2012. So most of those plants were new then.

Enjoy your trip

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by phone

I have two theories as to why:

1. It gets cold in Canada! People want somewhere warm they can hang out inside for free during the winter.

2. Canada doesn't have the population density of the US, meaning that for many people online shopping isn't as convenient an option as it is stateside. So you end up seeing more (particularly rural) people shopping at brick and mortar retail (including malls) than you might in the US.

I have no evidence to back this up lol

I would add many Canadians, Canadian companies (and Canadian banks loaning the money) don't like to build things on speculation. Canadians expect return on investment whereas Americans are bigger risk takers. A huge amount of research, due diligence is undertaken before new retail space is built.

In contrast to USA, like Trump's business model: who cares if your project fails and goes bankrupt, most of it was using other people's money to begin with

[Northern Light]

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

I'm convinced the retail vacancy rate in Canada must be about 1/3 that of the US's. I know Canada has its share of dead malls, but at least from what I've seen in Winnipeg and Calgary, its problems in that regard aren't nearly as bad as the US's.

This is probably a entire separate subject here in SSP's City Discussions section ... and if it already isn't, there should be economics PhD theses written on this topic. There's a huge glaring different between the health of (physical) retail in Canada vs the US, and the Big Question is ... why?

... more ...

Innsertname here is on point.

But to put some additional substance to it.

The retail vacancy rate overall in Canada is 2.6%

That value in the U.S. is 5.8% in Q2 2025.

Which is actually remarkably low given the different in ft2 of retail per person.

***

As noted by Innsert, the difference is huge in ft2 of retail per person. The U.S. is actually at 54.3ft2 per person vs 16.8ft2 in Canada.

***

In additional A-class mall properties in Canada are mostly controlled by only two owners.

Cadillac Fairview which is the real estate arm of the Ontario Teacher's Pension Fund

and

Oxford Properties which is the realty arm of OMERS, which is the Ontario Municipal Employees Pension Fund.

The manage the malls at a national level, cutting deals with national retailers across their portfolios; doing just enough local curation to customize to market and fill in gaps.

This is part, but only part of the story as well on fewer regional-only retailers in Canada.

The majority of chain retail is national and serves most major markets.

While the U.S. has lots of this, it has a more robust regional retail scene as well, which can make it more vulnerable to shifts.

Canada does have B and C malls as well, some of which are truly dying; but there are also specialist owners who take many of these on and manage to reinvigorate them with an eclectic mix of national and local, often anchored by grocery.

[O-tacular]

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

So now I'm in Calgary. Just got here mid-afternoon and haven't had much time to see much, but I'll get started with another of my travel brain droppings threads anyway.

1. Freeway names. I found it humorously ironic the way they named all the highways "[Something] Trail." There's Stony Trail, Deerfoot Trail (the biggest one, I think), Glenmore Trail, Bow Bottom Trail, and probably others. I am fully expecting them, sometime in the future, to name a 12-lane superhighway "Peaceful Brook Trail."

2. The Mahogany Development in SE Calgary. This thing is a really ritzy, cool development, discovered it on Google street maps some time ago and wanted to check it out. My hotel is near it. Some of the condos/apts there even gave me a bit of a Vancouver vibe, especially around Chairman's Steakhouse.

3. Poor jackrabbits. Speaking of the Mahogany development, there is this one undeveloped parcel in the middle of Mahogany surrounded by developed parcels, and this undeveloped lot is slated for some new development (it has a Proposed Land Use Change sign on it), and they've even started scraping off some of the dirt in one corner, but there's still some sagebrush on it. Was walking along the sidewalk next to it and there were these two jackrabbits chomping on the sagebrush. They were quite large, nearly the size of a mid-sized dog. I felt really sorry for these two jackrabbits, their habitat is dwindling down to nothing and who knows how much longer it'll be there? Where will they go when the bulldozers come? All the roads around it are busy, and if they tried crossing them they'd stand a good chance of getting hit by a car. And there doesn't look like much good jackrabbit habitat around that lot anyway. I had this desire to go catch those two jackrabbits and take them somewhere out in a rural area where they'd be safe. Poor guys.

Out of curiosity are you staying at the twin Marriotts in Seton by the Hospital?
Those are the only hotels in that neck of the woods besides the Deerfoot Inn 10 kms north. I live a couple blocks away.

That undeveloped section in Mahogany is an old farm that was supposed to become a market. No idea what the current plans are. Years ago I explored it a bit before it became fully enveloped. Don’t worry about the jackrabbits. They are everywhere and do well in the city due to less predators. Although when I think of it there’s a massive coyote population in the 10’s of thousands within city limits. And birds of prey. And bobcats. Fish Creek gets cougars and black bears too. Anyways, they live all over the city. They turn white in winter for the snow. During chinooks and periods with little snow they really stand out.

Some cool things not far away outside the city on Hwy 22x are the Calgary corn maze and McKinnon flats. Not big tourist draws outside of the city and really nice to visit if nature or the prairie are your thing.

[Architype]

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

4. The obviously imminent Vancouverization of Calgary. As I've said elsewhere, I've been to Vancouver many times and am quite familiar with it. It's really obvious that both the far eastern and far western ends of downtown Calgary are starting to "Vancouverize" with very "Vancouveresque" highrise condos and apartments. But for now both areas still have tons of parking lots and the highrises still look like so many anomalous things sprouting up in the middle of nowhere (maybe less so on the east side). There were parts south of the railroad tracks that looked like that as well. It seems clear to me this is the plan, and that in 30 years or so the skyline of downtown Calgary will look similar to what downtown Vancouver looks like now.

5. The Calgary Tower. I know this is one of Calgary's iconic landmarks, but seriously, it's starting to get buried. Already north and (sort of) west of it is a wall of skyscrapers that dwarf it. To the south it's still pretty unobstructed, but per #4 above the day will come when it's surrounded by towers taller than it to the north, east, west and south. And when that days comes ... what will be the point of it? Personally I think it's rather bleh looking. I was thinking they should turn the current orange thing at the top into maybe a glass ball with a fancy restaurant or something in it, but then double its size and at the new top put a new observation dome.

Here are some photos I took from the Calgary tower, sometime in the mid '80s, I thought it might be apropos to show them now as historical record. I don't remember the direction of the photos. The tower was already surrounded a bit by buildings almost as tall as the tower it seems, but Calgary had not been Vancouverized yet.

Sorry about the pre-digital quality.