Oilers99
Active Member
Those aerials aren’t really selling me. It looks like Terwillegar Towne. I don’t want to be a downer on Blatchford, but that’s a lot of single-use, relatively low-density development right from the get-go. Is someone’s quality of life here actually different enough to justify the premium? What’s the appeal?
Conversely, I think they should have started around NAIT station and gone higher density with a real mix of uses. Being right next to a campus and a shopping mall would have guaranteed a built-in population looking to live, shop, and spend time there. An already established node to piggy-back off of. The scale and mix could have been closer to something like UniverCity in Calgary.
The single-use row housing we’re seeing now feels like something that should have come later, after a “lifestyle” was already established in Blatchford. Right now, anyone moving in still needs a car. Transit isn’t properly established, LRT is through fields of nothingness, and you have to drive to get basics. Are residents really expected to wait decades before they can live the lifestyle Blatchford is selling?
If it was higher density it would develop an even slower pace...