| Calgary’s remaining heritage buildings are in a precarious position at the moment due to the high demand for new space for office towers and condos in the inner city.
It’s tempting for owners of heritage buildings to cash in on the hot real estate market by selling their buildings to developers who will knock them down and build a much higher building on the site.
But the City of Calgary is hoping a new system of density bonuses that are part of the recently approved Beltline Area Redevelopment Plan (ARP) will change that trend.
The way the new density bonuses work is the owner of a heritage building first has to have it designated as a historic resource by the city, meaning the owner then has to preserve and maintain the building. As an incentive to preserve the building, the owner is then allowed to sell density rights to a developer, who can then use them to build a higher density building than the city would normally allow on another site. The building owner therefore makes some money for choosing to save the heritage building, and the developer can build a higher density building elsewhere, which also likely results in a higher profit.
Developers who own heritage buildings themselves can also choose to preserve the buildings and the city would then allow them to build a higher density building on another site.
"In the current market I think it will make a significant difference. We’re getting calls already. I’ve got a meeting tomorrow to talk about a specific proposal that would take advantage of this provision. I’ve got another meeting set up in a couple of weeks for another developer who’s interested in looking at this," says Darryl Cariou, senior heritage planner at the city.
Cariou says density bonusing is in place throughout North America and can be an effective tool.
"Say you own a little house in the Beltline. Under the current zoning you could put up a 15-storey building. Why would you allow the city to designate the house and prevent you from doing that? That’s a big economic hit you’d have to take. But allowing you, the owner, to sell the unused density somewhere else mitigates that. It’s both an incentive and a removal of a disincentive at the same time," he explains.
Cariou says one successful example of the new density bonus is the Arriva project in Victoria Park, where the developer agreed to preserve the sandstone Victoria School and another old school building on the site in return for the right to greater density.
Downtown Calgary has had density bonuses in place for decades. However, Cariou says it wasn’t overly successful because there were too many options developers could choose from in order to get the right to greater density. For example, developers could connect their building to the Plus-15 system, buy public art or build an open plaza at the corner of their site and therefore qualify for higher density. Also, developers have always been allowed very high density in the downtown core so there was less of an incentive.
"Heritage was not the easiest way to get extra density in the downtown. In the Beltline it probably is," says Cariou. "We’ve said when the Beltline was being created, consistently heritage was one of the top issues for the community so we took that to heart and made that one of the major density provisions."
Under the Beltline ARP developers will also be able to qualify for higher density rights if they include affordable housing and /or space for non-profit community groups in their development, or if they preserve green space on another site.
Bob van Wegen, a board member of the Calgary Heritage Initiative, a non-profit group that is working to preserve historic buildings in the city, says the new density bonuses are a very positive step.
"During boom times, typically, heritage is under a lot of pressure because people want to build new buildings and maybe tear down old ones, but if people are looking for added density to build they can achieve that actually by saving heritage buildings," he says. "The city would get the protection of a heritage resource and the owner of the building would get some real benefit for preserving the building and would get some (money) to help them preserve the building."
Brent Toderian, manager of centre city planning for the city, says the city is also looking at changing the density bonusing approach in the downtown core, including Eau Claire and the East Village, to promote the preservation of heritage buildings.
"One of the main things we’ve heard throughout all our public processes is the city should do more to preserve the heritage features we have left," says Toderian. "Our task has been to put a developer in the position where it would be a bad business deal to tear down the heritage building…. We’re anxiously waiting to see how the marketplace responds to it, but so far initial discussions and conversations show there’s a lot of optimism. People are starting to recognize that if they own a heritage building they now have value they didn’t have just a month or two ago and similarly, developers are reading the writing on the wall and saying to themselves, if we want to exceed the density, particularly preserving heritage is the only way they can do that." |
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