The Victory Outreach Church is slated for demolition as the Stampede engulfs Victoria Park
Both sides of 12th Ave. S.E. are torn up for construction of condos and a Stampede expansion. Workers dig foundations, haul out dirt and put the finishing touches on the first new condo building to rise in the area. Across the CPR tracks to the north, the city has torn up the sewers and started to raise the area’s roads, preparing the neighbourhood for a slew of residential and retail developments.
In less than 10 years, the east end will be unrecognizable. To the south, shops and restaurants will line Olympic Way, the Stampede grounds will extend to 12th Ave., and glass-faced condo towers will line the adjacent streets. To the north, an underpass at Fourth Street S.E. will link the neighbourhood to the East Village, also sporting several condo and apartment blocks, as well as a music museum and a park along the Elbow River.
After a decade of planning by the city and the Stampede, construction has finally started in the east end of Calgary’s downtown. However, it’s not yet clear how the city will accommodate the area’s poor or the people displaced by the redevelopment.
The current development got underway last year when the Stampede began building a new casino, which opened this month. The organization is planning to construct four more buildings, including an expansion to the Roundup Centre, an agricultural facility and an Olds College campus. The city is also rebuilding 12th Ave. S.E., the Stampede’s new northern boundary. When completed, the street will be lined with trees and feature wider sidewalks.
Just across the street, condo developer Torode is putting up its own buildings. “Victoria Park and the East Village have struggled for several decades,” says Eileen Stan, the company’s vice president of development, as she sits in the sleek, concrete and glass main floor of the company’s new building on 12th Ave. and Third St. S.E. “Without redevelopment, it would be stagnant.”
Torode is building two condo towers on the site of Victoria Community School, a sandstone school the developer has restored and converted to office space. The company owns properties directly to the east and west that will likely be developed into lower-rise condo towers, a hotel and an office building. “There’s really a push for higher densities,” says Matthias Tita, the city’s manager for centre city planning and design. “It’s important to have a vital street edge.”
In the East Village, the city hopes for more condo towers and apartment buildings with retail and office space on the lower floors. It’s also planning a handful of heritage developments.
The King Edward Hotel will be converted into a music centre run by Cantos Music Foundation, with a museum and a bar that will feature live music. The Simmons Mattress Factory near the river has been converted to office space, and the city also plans to preserve the St. Louis Hotel and the Hillier Block on Eighth Ave. S.E. The remaining warehouses, a few old businesses and houses will likely be demolished.
When Don Delaney arrived in Victoria Park in 1992, the city was already talking about redeveloping it. The Stampede wanted to demolish part of the neighbourhood to expand, and residents were resisting.
Delaney founded the Victory Outreach Centre as a church and community centre with the mandate to help the area’s down and out. Much of Victoria Park’s population was made up of low-income tenants and homeless people trying to get off the streets. They were attracted to the area by its cheap rent. He remembers residents getting together to organize block parties and socialize at the church.
“It was a first step out of the shelters,” he says. “It was a really nice place, it was a community.”
When Mike Ward moved to an area rooming house in 1995 after getting out of detox, he was surprised by the friendliness of people on the street. “I enjoyed living there, I found it so polite,” he says.
Over the course of two years, he met and married his wife in the neighbourhood, volunteered at community functions and got involved fixing up the area’s old Victorian houses for other low-income tenants. All the while, the Stampede was trying to take over the area and tear it down. In 1997, Ward and his wife moved away. “I knew it was going to get torn down anyway, so I didn’t see any future there,” he says.
In 1998, city council approved the Stampede’s plan to expand to 12th Ave. The community resisted, but over the next few years, the Stampede bought up most of the properties in the area. The organization ramped up the redevelopment and paid to relocate tenants, then started demolishing their homes. Area businesses, including Stampede Grocery on 12th Ave., were forced to close as the population dropped.
Delaney stayed until the bitter end, closing the church in August 2007. “As we got closer to the end, you saw the houses disappear faster and faster,” he says. “When you don’t have a community, there’s no point in being there.”
At the same time, several plans to redevelop the East Village were proposed and then shelved. A 2000 plan, for instance, called for a canal to be built through the centre of the area. The plan collapsed when the city’s funding scheme for the idea failed and developers fled the area.
The city kick-started a new plan last year, which will see the area’s infrastructure upgraded before developers move in. “I’ve probably spent the better part of $4 million doing environmental cleanup,” says Chris Ollenberger, the city official charged with overseeing the development. The neighbourhood has some of the original sewers and wiring, and the roads also have to be raised, since the area sits on a flood plain. A former industrial neighbourhood, everything from car batteries to asbestos has been found buried near the Bow River.
Delaney’s concern is that, in its rush to develop the city, Calgary demolished a huge stock of affordable housing. Many residents in the area had to relocate farther way, to Forest Lawn and Ogden. “Looking back, it’s a sad loss. There was a community there,” he says. “There’s something healthy about a city that helps the poor.”
So far, the city hasn’t made plans to put more affordable housing in Victoria Park, and neither has Torode. Ollenberger, on the other hand, says low-income residents shouldn’t be squeezed out of the East Village as they were in Victoria Park. Once the neighbourhood is fully redeveloped, he hopes to see the homeless people who access the area’s shelters — the Drop-In Centre and the Salvation Army — integrate with the community. “Ideally, there would be a mix of incomes,” he says. “They will meld with the community.”
As for Delaney, he’s reopened Victory Outreach in Ogden, where many former east end residents have found homes. It’s a good location, he says, but he still hopes to return downtown someday. “There needs to be something in the downtown core,” he says. “No one wants to help the low-end.”
