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Honestly Cowboys Tent proximity to Stampede made it a great fit. Now itll be pretty far away lol.

But probably not a big deal at the end of the day
 
MichaelS said:
I saw that. I hope upgraded means actually maintained. Remember it was all "upgraded" when the park was built, and then quickly went to sh!t.
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I think the lasers were used exactly twice. I saw them on July 1st, 2001. I don't recall the waterfall working after the second year and the clock hasn't worked in several years. The park really needs a makeover. Unsure if a Cowboy's makeover is the solution though.
 
That park is in a bad spot where it's blocked in on all sides. So it's not too much of a surprise it gets forgotten and undermaintained.
North? - C-train tracks
East? - Mewata Armoury
South? - 9th Ave
West? - The mess of overpasses/underpasses
 
Duck Lightning said:
That park is in a bad spot where it's blocked in on all sides. So it's not too much of a surprise it gets forgotten and undermaintained.
North? - C-train tracks
East? - Mewata Armoury
South? - 9th Ave
West? - The mess of overpasses/underpasses
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I'll add to this that there isn't even a gateway sign to the park on the east side next to the CTrain station. I put a 311 in about it years ago but it never went anywhere. If you are not a local who already knows there is a park there, it's doubtful you will ever stumble across it. They should leverage how close it is to Kirby LRT station and out a big entrance sign showing it has courts and a skatepark. I will add it does make a decent festival space though and Mewata Armory makes a cool backdrop
 
Mountain Man said:
It's a great space for concerts for sure, not sure the slimeball Vikars will maintain it properly though....
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I am kind of surprised the city partnered with a nightclub owner who has such a sketchy reputation to do this kind of thing. Cowboys has been a trashy place and a seedy business for decades. Also seems surprisingly not very strategic by the city. I keep going back to the question, why Millennium Park?

We already have Prince's Island, Stampede Grounds, BMO, a new arena coming, Fort Calgary area, hectares of stampede-tent ready parking lots for pop-up festival needs - all host major events and major concerts all the time. All these are publicly-supported with hundreds of millions in public investment over the years. Many, if not all, are in better locations than Millennium Park to host events. Yes some of those venues are better than others, some need upgrades. But we have them - we have so many of them all over the place, that sit mostly empty most of the year.

So if we already have all that, why don't we use what we already have and just enhance an existing venues rather than have a weird weird sponsorship deal announced first, with vague "improvements" planned later?

There is no real obvious public benefit from this move apart from (in theory) saving a few bucks in maintenance that is so small and buried in the budget no one has ever made an issue out of. Offloading some of that cost is negligible and will never be noticed to anyone . I suspect the city didn't even care until Cowboys approached them - otherwise we'd already have a better idea on what these "upgrades" will be. Again, if there was some sort of master plan for Millennium Park we'd have heard about it and know what those upgrades are.

So what gives? My best guess - it's pure rent-seeking behaviour from Cowboys.

Cowboys only wants this done so they can capture more value on using public property with a sweetheart deal. This saves them the effort of working to negotiate and use other venues for time slots, upgrades, coordination. Why not have "their" own park - they don't have to rent parking from the Stampede or others for tents, they don't have to compete with folk fest at Prince's Island etc. This is pure Cowboy's play that the city agreed to. Let's see if I am right when the upgrades come along - I suspect a bit of paint, a lot of stuff to support a cowboy's branded music festival.

Perhaps Millennium Park is unloved and forgotten for many people compared to other public spaces, but this is really weird almost sole-sourced sponsorship arrangement to make undefined "upgrades" to public land that doesn't seem supported by any obvious strategic master plan. Will be an interesting to watch this story evolve as we get more details.
 
DiscoStu said:
Fort Calgary seems like it would've been a much more ideal spot to me. It already acts as a festival spot at times, plus its close enough to Stampede to be part of the activities during that week.
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Over the last decade I've lived in this city, increasingly Stampede has spread across Downtown and the Beltline. It's nice to see that the festival itself is too big to hold just on and near the grounds, and that we are spreading the events around a bit more. Makes it a LOT more desirable for access and not concentrating everyone in one spot. Also, as the off-ground events get bigger, the busier the grounds get as a result of just more traffic of all types travelling to the core for all kinds of events.
 
MichaelS said:
A bit of TODish happening in a location probably not top of mind. The empty lot to the east of the Westwinds Superstore, in the SW corner of the intersection of 64th Avenue and Caslteridge Boulevard NE, has a DP in:

Pretty typical suburban woodframe design, but still hundreds of units within walking distance of the McKnight/Westwinds C-Train station.
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So the land use for these apartments up by westwinds station got refused by Council today.
 
MichaelS said:
So the land use for these apartments up by westwinds station got refused by Council today.
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WTF! Why? I live near this piece of land and thought the sea of parking needed to be removed sooner rather than later. I was just worried about the increased traffic congestion in the area.
 
gsunnyg said:
WTF! Why? I live near this piece of land and thought the sea of parking needed to be removed sooner rather than later. I was just worried about the increased traffic congestion in the area.
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This was rejected by council 10-5. Is traffic really bad here, so close to the train station? Very interesting one to reject.
 
What a missed opportunity to provide hundreds of housing units within walking distance to LRT! We aren't going to solve the housing crisis by building a few dozen rowhouse 4-plexes in Altadore and Mt Pleasant at $800,000 a unit. This Council is incredibly frustrating sometimes. :mad:
 
Albertasaurus said:
What a missed opportunity to provide hundreds of housing units within walking distance to LRT! We aren't going to solve the housing crisis by building a few dozen rowhouse 4-plexes in Altadore and Mt Pleasant at $800,000 a unit. This Council is incredibly frustrating sometimes. :mad:
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Eh - the design and orientation of this project was really poor. They really did nothing to design in any of that “walking”, it was a pure car-oriented building with massive parking and no pedestrian thoughtful designs anywhere within or around it.

The parcel could do a lot better than what was proposed to make actual walking more likely and enjoyable. Close enough on a map to transit isn’t the same thing as designed to be actually walkable.
 
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