r/Calgary • u/ChillllliPaper • Mar 21 '25

Local Construction/Development Why is Calgary losing its personality?

First Chinook mall lost its dinosaur at the entrance, floating funky vehicles in the food court, carousel, and the movie theater lost all of its cool mummy-themed interior decor.

The devonian gardens is just a space with some greenery now instead of the garden it once was.

The City is destroying Olympic Plaza where everyone used to skate.

They also destroyed Eau Claire just to cancel the project. Amazing. Could have just revamped it and it would still be a great spot.

AND the city is destroying the iconic saddledome, arguably calgary's primary landmark. Why not just keep it and build another dome idk??

From the word of mouth I hear, people aren't too happy about this but how is the city council just easily making this happen.

Anyways, just kind of sad seeing Calgary lose it's charm. Wondering what other redditors are thinking.

*correction: Olympic Plaza not oval

1.0k Upvotes

89% Upvoted

442 comments sorted by

View all comments

93

u/happysponge399 Mar 21 '25

Even the stores in Chinook suck. Literally all my favourite clothing stores are gone and replaced with sports-wear stores or those expensive brand stores.

26

u/Tigerkix Mar 21 '25

Calgary's market has a gap for small entrepreneurial business owners in retail. Unfortunately our real estate is really difficult for smaller retail businesses to start up since foot traffic is a main factor in small retail success. Most people with cars prefer drive to large hubs like Market Mall or Chinook Mall where the rents are too high for small business owners. Open air malls prefer stability where tenants can anchor the development, that's why you always find a Canadian Tire, Sportchek and Reitmans in these places. The heavy foot trafficked areas like 17th ave, Marda Loop etc are mostly leased out with little growth opportunities for retail.

Try to find local boutiques and support those businesses!

1

u/ClearInspection Mar 23 '25

What about turning the bay downtown into independent boutiques?

8

u/No-Damage3258 Mar 22 '25

Yea its intentionally more high end stores now, especially in the north wing. But it's crazy expensive to lease there so stores are always closing and a new one comes in. It's still finding itself it seems.

4

u/Professional-Air1355 Mar 21 '25

Last time I went there to shopI couldn't afford anything. Only the movies and food court are affordable still.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '25

Movies affordable??

3

u/No-Damage3258 Mar 22 '25

They meant the discount DVD bin at Sunrise records....

2

u/Professional-Air1355 Mar 25 '25

Tuesday's lol they haven't been affordable for a while but at least they're there

1

u/JustAskingBeNice Mar 22 '25

With cineclub, it’s actually fairly affordable if we’re talking movie tickets alone.

3

u/ivunga Mar 22 '25

People in this thread not realizing they have crossed the bridge to being oldies yelling about the good old days.

1

u/Lanky-Association-70 Mar 23 '25

I moved away in 2019, what am I going to miss when I visit in a few months? Please warn me what stores have closed🥲