Downtown Calgary progress report cause for optimism, but crime still an impediment

A fresh report on Calgary's initiatives to stabilize a dynamic tax base downtown while clamping down on crime got some thumbs up at its release Tuesday. But a local business group says there's still lots of work to do to make it more inviting to suburbanites.

The mayor told reporters Tuesday the goal is to make the city core more vibrant — a place to live and a place to visit. 

"For too long, it was seen as simply a business district that opened in the morning and shut down at night," Mayor Jyoti Gondek said. "Calgarians deserved more."

The city's downtown strategy director said the immediate challenges really came into focus about a decade ago.

"After the oil crash in 2014, the value of our downtown office buildings dropped by 62 per cent in four years. And because our city operates on a revenue-neutral tax system, those dollars don't just disappear. We have to collect them from other properties across Calgary," Thom Mahler explained.

"So we instituted an emergency program called the Phased Tax Program. Normally with those programs you run them until downtown comes back. But this time, downtown didn't come back. And the pandemic happened and it made it even clearer that we could no longer rely on office space as the only way to fund our services."

Gondek said funding for mitigation programs ramped up in 2021, with $200 million from the city, followed by another $50 million after the October election.

"A revitalized downtown functions as a true neighbourhood. It is dynamic, it's inclusive, and it is alive with opportunity. It's a place where people gather, where they connect, where they live," she said.

"Our transformation has gained international attention in just three short years. The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle have all documented our evolution, and they have done it with envy."

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A business association in the city welcomes the international accolades but said there's still lots to do.

"We have seen a noticeable increase of Calgary police presence downtown," said Mark Garner, executive director of the Calgary Downtown Association.

"I think there is success there, but I still think there is work to do. We still have [homeless] encampments, we still have open [drug] consumption, a lot of graffiti. So we have to go after those things as well because we are still not attracting the people from Mahogany and the surrounding suburban areas to come downtown."

The report details successes like 1,500 housing units for 2,400 people, including 300 subsidized spaces, from 11 active office-residential conversions. Seven of those projects are scheduled to wrap later this year.