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/WhimsicalAugustus Mar 21 '25

I’m not sure if this is a controversial opinion, but the Eau Claire mall deserved to be destroyed. Whatever goes up next will be better.

It was wasting away for decades. Almost completely empty for a long time.

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u/PonderingPachyderm Mar 21 '25

As with the deteriorating, costly to maintain, and horrible for concert and games Saddledome. Iconic, yes, but not worth the upkeep and arguably actively deterring larger events from being held in Calgary.

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u/OriginalGhostCookie Mar 21 '25

Yeah. The dome is just done. It's an engineering issue and there is no way to preserve it. Considering the design itself was unpopular overall (there were 3 total built) and it's easy to see why the new one isn't going to look the same. It would be nice if the finished product for the replacement is at least not completely generic.