| A group of Crescent Heights residents is fighting the City of Calgary’s plans to bulldoze their houses as part of a strategy to revitalize the area around 16 Avenue North. The longtime residents say they’re being pushed out of their neighbourhood in order to make way for a new vision of the community. However, the city says the expropriations are necessary to provide access to businesses along the avenue once the widening happens.
The City of Calgary has started to widen 16 Avenue North, which is part of the TransCanada highway, from four to six lanes between 14th Street N.W. and 6th Street N.E. in order to speed up transportation through the city. As part of its widening plans, it has also created a new area redevelopment plan (ARP) for all the land from 15 Avenue North to 17 Avenue North that is adjacent to the widening project. The proposed 16 Avenue North Urban Corridor ARP aims to improve the urban design of the area and make it more appealing to pedestrians and increase residential density.
The 16 Avenue North road widening will include a new landscaped median in the middle of the street, which will reduce the places that drivers can make left hand turns into Crescent Heights. The city is also planning to make some streets in Crescent Heights, which are currently through streets to 16 Avenue North, cul de sacs in order to reduce traffic in the neighbourhood. Ald. Druh Farrell says the creation of the new median and the new cul de sacs will make it much more difficult to access two businesses along 16 Avenue North and the city has to create a new laneway behind the businesses in order for people to access them. In order to create the laneway, Farrell says it’s necessary for the city to knock down nine houses between 4 Street N.W. and 1 Street N.W.
Tina Petersen, who has lived in the community for 15 years, owns one of the houses the city wants to knock down.
Petersen says although the city has been negotiating with businesses along 16 Avenue North for years, homeowners between 4 Street N.W. and 1 Street N.W. were only told in January 2006 that the city plans to knock down their houses to build a back alley.
"We’ve been bullied, pushed, lied to," says Petersen. "Democracy only counts apparently if you’re a business not a homeowner. We don’t want to stand in the way of progress but we want to be treated with respect and dignity."
Bonita Northam, another homeowner who might be about to lose the home she’s been in for 30 years, is also unimpressed with the city’s actions.
"I think it sucks," she says. "I don’t want to move. It’s been my home. My daughter grew up here."
Petersen says she suspects that part of the need for the new back alley is in order to create access to new, expensive condo developments along 16 Avenue North as part of the city’s new vision for the neighbourhood. She says she doesn’t feel like ward alderman Druh Farrell is looking out for the homeowners’ interests.
"Druh is an alderman of the developers, not us," says Petersen.
She’s skeptical that 16 Avenue North could become a pedestrian friendly urban environment such as what exists in Kensington, Inglewood or along 17th Avenue S.W.
"You’re going to sit there and sip your latte and brush the debris away?" she asks, referring to debris kicked up by the many semis and other heavy traffic driving down the street.
Val Maclean won’t lose her house but the city wants 10 feet of her property for the alley. She’s upset about what’s happening to her neighbours and she says the city’s consultation process was inadequate.
"Basically none of us had a problem with 16 Avenue widening," she says. "It’s the expropriation of the homes for a back alley that we can’t see a need for."
Maclean says she’s opposed to the new 16 Avenue North Urban Corridor ARP replacing the existing ARP for Crescent Heights along 16 Avenue North and 15 Avenue North.
"Are you now saying the communities are no longer able to have a say because that’s wrong," she says. "How can demolishing part of a community really be good for it?"
Maclean says the city’s consultations on the new ARP have been more like "listen and learn sessions" rather than real consultations where city planners listened to residents.
Ald. Druh Farrell says the city has done extensive consultations with community associations and residents on the new ARP and adjacent community associations, including Crescent Heights, are in support of the plan.
"There’s been more consultation with the 16 Avenue project than any other road project ever in the city," says Farrell.
Farrell says the goal is to make 16 Avenue North and area "a hub for the inner city and an active, lively place."
"This is groundbreaking. It’s exciting. It’s going to be gorgeous," she says.
Farrell says in the past when council only planned to widen the road without any focus on creating a quality urban design and pedestrian environment "people wouldn’t develop on 16 Avenue if their life depended on it."
"The redevelopment interest that’s been generated by this plan is extraordinary. Five years ago we’d dream of getting this kind of interest on 16 Avenue North because people were running away from it," she says.
City council will vote on the 16 Avenue North Urban Corridor ARP on December 11. |
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