[thecivilengineer]

City of Calgary and cSPACE partner to revitalize historic buildings into vibrant arts and culture hub

The City of Calgary and cSPACE Projects have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to explore transforming two historic downtown buildings into a new arts and culture hub. The City and cSPACE are collaborating to find new uses for the Historic Fire Hall No. 1 (140 6 Avenue S.E.) and the...

newsroom.calgary.ca

 

[luk_o]

City of Calgary and cSPACE partner to revitalize historic buildings into vibrant arts and culture hub

The City of Calgary and cSPACE Projects have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to explore transforming two historic downtown buildings into a new arts and culture hub. The City and cSPACE are collaborating to find new uses for the Historic Fire Hall No. 1 (140 6 Avenue S.E.) and the...

newsroom.calgary.ca

Love it. cSPACE MardaLoop is fantastic. If they can do more of the same with those great historic buildings downtown, this is a big win.

 

[Golfing guy]

Interesting read. For the new developments that need city capital, what actual costs are the city responsible for?

'It's still a beauty contest': Some new Calgary communities move ahead

Calgary’s once-revamped process for new growth approvals isn’t panning out as expected, according to one councillor, as her colleagues continue to debate incoming applications despite admin recommendations. The Infrastructure and Planning Committee (IPC) reviewed five new growth applications...

livewirecalgary.com

 

[CBBarnett]

Interesting read. For the new developments that need city capital, what actual costs are the city responsible for?

'It's still a beauty contest': Some new Calgary communities move ahead

Calgary’s once-revamped process for new growth approvals isn’t panning out as expected, according to one councillor, as her colleagues continue to debate incoming applications despite admin recommendations. The Infrastructure and Planning Committee (IPC) reviewed five new growth applications...

livewirecalgary.com

Short answer: there is a cost sharing calculation that splits the costs between developers and the city.

Longer answer: The city is responsible for the share of the infrastructure deemed to have citywide benefit while the developers are responsible for the local infrastructure and the proportion of the infrastructure they benefit from.

Really long answer: The devil is of course, in the details. Defining "local" and "citywide" is difficult and negotiated, getting into the weeds of things like the size of a pipe or the classification of a road being cost-shared differently. Then there is the cumulative impact - for example, my new neighbourhood doesn't need any new upgrades to a water treatment plant itself, however the cumulative impact of all the new neighbourhoods means we need a new water treatment plant. There's then a big negotiation and formula allocate some of those water treatment expansion costs to each new development, but some cost isn't allocated as the public also benefits at-large from a newer treatment plant. For some things, location matters - so some areas are charged more than others because they need more infrastructure than others.

Finally, there's the financing costs of all this - city typically fronts the money for all this infrastructure, so everyone can benefit from the lower interest rates the city can get. The city then pays back that loan with the levies it collects once the development actually occurs. Works fine until there's development delays or changing economic conditions - that payback period can get delayed, incurring higher debt charges publicly.

All this means politics, lobbying and lots of interests forever in negotiation as we are talking hundreds of millions, even billions, of dollars annually for both public and private players in this.

 

[CalgaryTiger]

Love it. cSPACE MardaLoop is fantastic. If they can do more of the same with those great historic buildings downtown, this is a big win.

Working near here, I'm very excited to have a little more life in this part of downtown.

 

[CalgaryTiger]

Interesting read. For the new developments that need city capital, what actual costs are the city responsible for?

'It's still a beauty contest': Some new Calgary communities move ahead

Calgary’s once-revamped process for new growth approvals isn’t panning out as expected, according to one councillor, as her colleagues continue to debate incoming applications despite admin recommendations. The Infrastructure and Planning Committee (IPC) reviewed five new growth applications...

livewirecalgary.com

Some of those infrastructure investment amounts...

West View $102.6 million investment required.
East segment of one of the Glacier Ridge got approved (I think) but they putting off the rest of it to a future date because of $142 million city investment required.
The other Glacier Ridge would trigger the addition of a new $22 million emergency services building.

So $266.6 million would need to spent by the city for these communities to even begin construction.

It would, eventually, lead to 18,000 new boundary-area Calgary homes and thus people paying city taxes but damn that is a decade plus from being realized. Meaning, if I'm thinking about this correctly, property taxes in this area don't actually start to go towards other city services for awhile. I know there are some development levies but we've discussed how those and property taxes take awhile to pay back the City for what they put in.

I know we know building in established areas is better, as this isn't a suburban development forum but when I sit down and think about it still gets to me.

 

[CBBarnett]

Some of those infrastructure investment amounts...

West View $102.6 million investment required.
East segment of one of the Glacier Ridge got approved (I think) but they putting off the rest of it to a future date because of $142 million city investment required.
The other Glacier Ridge would trigger the addition of a new $22 million emergency services building.

So $266.6 million would need to spent by the city for these communities to even begin construction.

It would, eventually, lead to 18,000 new boundary-area Calgary homes and thus people paying city taxes but damn that is a decade plus from being realized. Meaning, if I'm thinking about this correctly, property taxes in this area don't actually start to go towards other city services for awhile. I know there are some development levies but we've discussed how those and property taxes take awhile to pay back the City for what they put in.

I know we know building in established areas is better, as this isn't a suburban development forum but when I sit down and think about it still gets to me.

It's part of the reason density is the suburbs have increased so dramatically - it's so expensive to build out there, density is required to go up to help pay for all the new stuff while keeping housing accessibly priced.

In eras of cheaper land and greater public subsidy of suburban growth, the density could be lower and the financial math still worked (because the developer and the subsequent homeowner was never really expected to pay for even the local infrastructure entirely).

That's not to say redevelopment growth is free - any form of growth comes with costs and impacts, it's just building new regional-scale roads and pipes needed for brand new areas is so expensive, incremental redevelopment is often effectively "free" in comparison. This is notably most true in areas where we built for neighbourhoods for 30 toilet flushes per day per house (a family of 5) but only see 10 flushes a day per house (a single or senior with no kids at home). Replace that old house with 3 townhomes and it possible you won't need any new infrastructure at all.

Situation gets more complicated for more significant redevelopment density increases where infrastructure demand exceeds the existing built capacity, but even this style of development benefits from proximity to reduce costs - connected or upgraded a major pipe that's only 20m from a development is going to cost a lot less than building 2km of new major pipe in the suburbs.

 

[darwink]

property taxes in this area don't actually start to go towards other city services for awhile

Some communities, never. Unfortunately, fire service is so expensive, that if the community road layout/connectivity with neighbours is poor, the community likely never recovers from the original year over year accumulate deficit from initial fire service.

 

[CalgaryTiger]

I'll also call out that reading between the lines... Suburban councillors likely get an outsized amount of financial support from suburban developers. Not that urban ones don't get some from infill and condo developers but why else would councillors be pushing so hard for these communities.

 

[CBBarnett]

I'll also call out that reading between the lines... Suburban councillors likely get an outsized amount of financial support from suburban developers. Not that urban ones don't get some from infill and condo developers but why else would councillors be pushing so hard for these communities.

True - because of the negotiation component. The math is complex and multi-variable to estimate the costs, let alone argue the "fair" distribution of who should pay for what. It is linked into all the countless debates on standards and rules about development and services (e.g. parking requirements, setbacks, right-of-way widths, what is the acceptable distance from a fire stations etc.) Even transportation standards and models impact it. For example, if we accept a different higher level of congestion as okay - we won't trigger the "need" for as many or as large of suburban arterial roads, thus lowering the cost of suburban development. It's a design choice with pros/cons that impact all of this.

Because it's so complex and muddled with so many technical conversations, it will always be debated. Politicians will never have the technical expertise to understand the nuances and therefore are subject to lobbying. This leaves a permanent incentive by suburban developers to advocate for their view of how costs should be allocated.

The politics are so important in this that it can be argued that's its actually better defined as political problem first, with infrastructure is only being the secondary issue. For example, in other cities where they have ran out of room in the city boundary for bare land growth, the political conversation doesn't exist on sprawl at all, the cities only focus on redevelopment cost triggers and allocation. This is Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal's development world view.

Calgary does both greenfield and redevelopment types of growth and therefore has the politics of both types of growth simultaneously. If Calgary stopped annexing lands and ran out of new growth in the burbs, we'd obviously only care about redevelopment too.

 

[Golfing guy]

I'll also call out that reading between the lines... Suburban councillors likely get an outsized amount of financial support from suburban developers. Not that urban ones don't get some from infill and condo developers but why else would councillors be pushing so hard for these communities.

It wasn’t long ago the election was based off of that. Nenshi vs Smith. Smith was backed by developers

 

[badc0ffee]

Why wouldn't we push for suburban communities? They allow us to build a lot of units quickly, something that can't happen in a redevelopment. They're often denser than what can be built as a redevelopment, too.

There's also the fact that if Calgary doesn't build these communities, the surrounding MDs will, only without transit service, and to a lower standard in a number of ways.

 

[CalgaryTiger]

Why wouldn't we push for suburban communities? They allow us to build a lot of units quickly, something that can't happen in a redevelopment. They're often denser than what can be built as a redevelopment, too.

There's also the fact that if Calgary doesn't build these communities, the surrounding MDs will, only without transit service, and to a lower standard in a number of ways.

I don't think we're saying "they should not be built 'period'". At least I'm not.

Just my annual or maybe quarterly realization that there's equalization at all levels (Alberta/Ontario>Quebec/Maritimes, Calgary/Edmonton>Rural Alberta Municipalities). At the city level, established communities equalize new communities whose taxes for decades go to pay off the upfront cost of city services that mean from the City's perspective CAPEX and OPEX of these communities do not make the city whole for some time.

For me, it isn't a "we should build up not out". It is a we should build out AND up. My point: It is typically the suburban councillors who do not support density, look at the votes on key inner-city density projects. Those councillors should realize that it is efficient use of existing services in those inner-city communities that make suburban communities possible while allowing tax increases to not be insane. (Tongue-in-cheek and to use Trump's mentality) I mean they don't even say thank you, us inner-city folk could just charge them congestion fees for accessing the services we pay for while they're still paying off their basic infrastructure services.

 

[MichaelS]

I don't think we're saying "they should not be built 'period'". At least I'm not.

Just my annual or maybe quarterly realization that there's equalization at all levels (Alberta/Ontario>Quebec/Maritimes, Calgary/Edmonton>Rural Alberta Municipalities). At the city level, established communities equalize new communities whose taxes for decades go to pay off the upfront cost of city services that mean from the City's perspective CAPEX and OPEX of these communities do not make the city whole for some time.

The bolded is not necessarily true anymore, for every community. While the data is not perfect, some of the business cases for these new greenfield communities turn revenue positive for the City in pretty short order. This is due to the more compact, dense nature of the development we see in the greenfield under our relativel new MDP policies. Couple that with substantially increased offsite levies, and some suburbs (location dependent) are not the financial drain that they have been characterized as.

 

[darwink]

The bolded is not necessarily true anymore, for every community. While the data is not perfect, some of the business cases for these new greenfield communities turn revenue positive for the City in pretty short order. This is due to the more compact, dense nature of the development we see in the greenfield under our relativel new MDP policies. Couple that with substantially increased offsite levies, and some suburbs (location dependent) are not the financial drain that they have been characterized as.

It really depends. Admin was really pushed by council to make communities look better, and the business cases were torqued to the point that Admin went from recommended no communities to recommending 12 or 14 iirc.

I don't think this is a bad thing though. TBH besides the beltline I doubt any residential communities 'pay' for themselves.

The businesses cases IMO are most importantly used to tell developers to go back and improve their proposal if the ROI is egregiously negative, and since they are co-developed and iterative, the developer can get feedback like: change this road to align with that road, so the transit route would work a lot better and fire trucks can serve 3 adjacent neighbourhoods instead of 2. Before even changing the proposed unit mixes.