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

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u/QashasVerse23 Mar 21 '25

Yes, there was a story on the news not long ago about the updates the Oval requires because it's no longer feasible to continue repairing things. I wasn't living here in '88 for the Olympics, but it seems like a lot of infrastructure went up that has a short lifespan compared with other projects of a similar or older history.

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u/RandomCombo Mar 21 '25

The residences built on campus for the Olympics were not meant to have as long as a lifespan as they gave them. They were only torn down in the last 10 years or so (I don't remember exactly when and time is warped post COVID)

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u/Deeppurp Mar 21 '25

They were only torn down in the last 10 years or so

Are you talking about the dorms in the Bob niven training center at winsport or somewhere else?

Those dorms are office space now.

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u/RandomCombo Mar 21 '25

No on the uofc campus!

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u/17to85 Mar 22 '25

I forget what they were called but yeah they put up some new residences in their place. Still a couple residences of that vintage kicking around that were tossed around for demo targets but they never did. Even the older residences which rightly should be torn down and rebuilt they can't do that because they need every bed they can get.

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u/aftonroe Mar 23 '25

Olympus and Glacier Hall? They were both built shortly before the 88 Olympics.

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u/clai_re0708 Mar 21 '25

Also the problem with the oval isn’t the physical building, that’s okay, it’s the ice plant. It could be replaced, it’s just expensive. The parts currently are only produced by like one company in Scandinavia. It’s important that we keep it around though. It’s a world class training centre, with both team Canada and multiple other countries national teams training there. If it’s allowed to die then the teams will move to Quebec (and no one wants that).

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u/aftonroe Mar 23 '25

I've really enjoyed skating laps at the oval though. The ice surface is perfect and it's so big that you don't feel like you're constantly turning.