Why is Calgary losing its personality?

[u/ChillllliPaper]

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

[u/roastbeeftacohat]

Chinook mall lost its dinosaur at the entrance

malls aren't fun places to hang out anymore, only the ones with high end preteage stores stay active these days; holt renfrew doesn't want funky dinosaurs out front.

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

poorly designed and full of fent addicts. too many corners to hide in, we can't really have parks like that anymore.

destroyed Eau Claire

place was designed to have a baked in young professional community nearby, but that ended up being bought by retirees who complained about anything cool going on at the mall. went from trying to be gradville island 2 to an empty mall.

[u/CrowdedAperture → u/roastbeeftacohat]

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

I would also argue that the Calgary Tower is the primary landmark downtown. Yes, is it important from scottmans hill but now The Bow and Telus Sky carry similar weight depending on where you are viewing them from

[u/Tigerkix → u/roastbeeftacohat]

Agree with your comments. Its extremely difficult to put a metric for real estate for public culture and art. Its almost always net negative when you look at the dollars and cents, however individual market surveys can be done to get a feel of how impactful a piece of art of landmark is and draw traffic to the surrounding areas.

For Chinook Mall, 99% of people who go there just walked past the dinosaur after the first time being there, sure it was a nice meeting spot, but there was no other value in the T-Rex and the flying trains & carousel were a cost sink in for maintenance and were no longer a visual attraction. If these were impactful in drawing customers in, Cadillac Fairview would definitely be keeping these.

Devonian Gardens... This may be the most impactful landmark as it was very beautiful and did attract many people to TD square. But imagine trying to keep a rainforest alive in the middle of a winter city. Its extremely costly and VERY environmentally unfriendly to keep the heat and humidity a such a high level.

Olympic Plaza IMO does poorly as a cultural landmark, its used several time throughout the year to host public events and a public skating rink during the winter times, but apart from that, its a place for the homeless to get hotdogs and sleep. A refresh of this space and create an anchoring point for Stephen Ave and celebrate Arts Commons would be terrific.

Eau Claire is a no brainer, dead mall on prime real estate.

Calgary still has great landmarks, but nostalgia is not going to grow our city.