5 key urban development issues Calgary's next city council will face

This column is an opinion by Richard White, who has served on the Calgary Planning Commission (Citizen at Large), the Calgary Tourism Board, the Calgary Public Art Board and the Tourism Calgary Board. He has also written extensively about urban development. For more information about CBC's Opinion section, please see the FAQ.

Come Monday night, Calgary will have a vastly changed city council, and it comes at a time when our city is at a critical point in its evolution.

As a writer on urban development for a decade, with years of past experience in Calgary city planning offices and with decades spent wandering the neighbourhoods of this city which have undergone so much change, I've tried to sit down and list my hopes for our city.

We must transition from a downtown-centric, corporate-headquarters-office-tower city, to a city that supports multiple employment hubs — concentrated office areas near the airport, the development of more inland port distribution centres where trucks and trains can load and unload. We need to build up the areas around hospitals and post-secondary campuses.

We need a new council that can link vision with current economic reality. No more grand visions which make charming artist renderings. No more endless overlapping visions for small pockets of the city. We need big picture thinkers and doers.

We need council members with a diversity of experiences and expertise that will bring different perspectives and insights into how to manage our city to the benefit of everyone. 

We need a council that can work together as a team and not get lost in endless debates and rethinking past decisions; that has happened far too often in the past. It does a disservice to the city and its citizens. It's no way to plan for the future.

The new council will need to adapt to the new economic realities of COVID and climate change, and will not try to preserve the past. They will have to look for opportunities to work proactively with the private sector and other levels of government to strategically invest tax dollars where they will pay the biggest dividends.  

They must capitalize on the city's three multi-billion dollar infrastructure projects — the ring road, Green Line and Stampede Park's culture and entertainment district. We need a council that can make decisions and give administration direction to not get sidetracked micro-managing the city.  

Here are what I consider to be the five key things Calgary's new city council will have to address regarding Calgary's transition. 

Property tax reform 

The downtown office tower property tax cash cow is dead. This means the new council will have to derive a fair and equitable formula for collecting property taxes from residents and businesses. 

Because of the drop in value of empty downtown office buildings over the past several years, a bigger tax burden has been placed on small businesses operating out of commercial and industrial buildings outside of the downtown. 

As the Calgary Chamber of Commerce tells us in its municipal election platform, the current system would have imposed a 23 per cent increase in warehouse property taxes in 2021, however, council capped the increase to 10 per cent by dipping into its reserve funds. Council can't keep doing this every year. 

At some point, Calgarians are going to have to accept their residential property taxes have to go way up — as the total assessed value for residential properties is 3.6 times that of non-residential — or the new council is going to have to make some serious spending cuts. 

While most people think of Calgary as a major corporate headquarters city, with all our downtown towers, in fact as Calgary Economic Development has it, Calgary is home to 58,000+ businesses, with 81 per cent having less than 10 employees scattered across the city. 

Instead of spending millions helping national and international pension funds and REITs (with billions of dollars in assets) to convert office buildings to residential or to build a new arena, the new council must create a fair and equitable formula for taxing small businesses in a way that lets them thrive — as the city's future is in fostering the growth of small businesses. 

Suburban hub opportunities 

Calgary needs a plan to proactively manage the city's northeast quadrant (aka airport city) to capitalize on its growth potential, as it does downtown. 

It's an area where our international airport is surrounded by distribution warehouses, and it's next to road and rail links. In this way, it's a bit like Richmond is for greater Vancouver and B.C.

The new 500,000 and 1,000,000-square-foot distribution centres on the east side of the Deerfoot divide are the office towers of the 21st century.  The many, many small business parks are in fact incubators for small businesses. The northeast quadrant has the potential to rival Calgary's downtown as a major employment hub (it already has more hotel rooms than downtown).

But this is just one hub.

Transit oriented development (TOD) in the suburbs must also be a priority for the new council. And it's going to need to work with the private sector to capitalize on the billions of dollars the city has spent on LRT and BRT development. 

LRT must be more than just a commuter rail system for downtown workers. Council must foster development next to existing and new LRT Stations.

For example, Brentwood Station is ripe for development with two shopping centres on the east side and the University of Calgary's proposed innovation quarter on the west. It must become a complete urban village, not just a few colourful condo towers.

And why is the land around the Westbrook LRT station still undeveloped nine years after the station opened? What about decade-old plans for fostering TOD developments at Anderson and Chinook Centre stations? 

These are wasted opportunities. 

Safety and social service reform 

The city's biggest issue isn't the empty downtown office buildings but safety. 

There is no point in investing billions of dollars in a new arena, BMO Centre, the Glenbow, Arts Commons and office conversions if we can't create a downtown that is perceived as a safe place to visit. There is also no point in expanding the LRT, if it is perceived as being unsafe to ride, especially in the evenings.

These safety issues, and related social issues like affordable housing, mental health and addictions support will require the new council to foster partnerships with both the federal and provincial governments, as well as not-for-profit organizations, if we are going to have a vibrant downtown. 

Fewer plans, more action

This may sound counterintuitive but we need fewer plans.

The city is great at creating plans. Plans full of planning jargon making it difficult for anyone other than a planner or urban nerd to read and understand.  

The new council must streamline the community engagement and approval procedures to enhance developments that will diversify and increase the city's tax base. While some think Calgary is already too developer-friendly, our city desperately needs to strategically work with the private sector to foster infill developments across the city to curb urban sprawl.

The future balance

We can't continue to spend as if we are still in boom times or as if boom times will return soon. The new council is going to have to come together quickly and make some tough decisions on taxes, safety and balancing the needs of the "greater downtown" with the city-at-large. 

It's also going to have to learn quickly to invest our limited tax dollars more strategically.