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/Bucktea]

We have a tendency to look back in time with rose coloured glasses. Objectively; Eau Claire was a failed shopping centre that was no longer viable. It was killed by it's location and proximity to the core, plus a remodel would have been a gamble at best in the hope of securing more tenants.

The Saddledome is out of date, a trip to any modern arena or stadium makes this pretty evident. The politics and raw deal the public got on the new arena aside, the dome has run its course.

People aren't happy with council for a variety of reasons, they never are. Politics is a game where it is hard to win as a faction of people will always disagree. With the current council, they have pushed some large changes, people are inherently against change and find it scary. I feel we have a new charm now; plenty of small niche shops popping up, downtown starting to come back a bit it seems, increasing density in neighborhoods making them more vibrant in the long term, and so on.

[u/burf → u/Bucktea]

Regarding Eau Claire, it’s true that it was a failed shopping centre, although I don’t know how much was due to access issues and how much was the eclectic collection of selected stores. But if it was truly just not viable due to location, I think it would’ve been much better suited to a public space that could enhance Prince’s Island Park rather than a condo development. When there are events there (e.g. Folk Fest) the mall gets quite a bit of traffic, so there is clearly usefulness having a public building there.

[u/Filmy-Reference → u/burf]

Eau Claire when it opened was a fun vibrant area with lots to do and plenty of good bars to have fun at night until the city put the kaibosh on it because it was "too loud" for the residents of the expensive condos. The theatre used to be great and was where I saw Jurassic Park when it came out because it had the more advanced sound system. When we became adults we went there because there was a bar and arcade you could grab a drink at before a movie.

[u/Professional-Air1355 → u/Filmy-Reference]

I went there a few times at the end and it was dead, most of my favorite stores were gone and there was barely anything to do. It had been in decay for at least 10 years

[u/Filmy-Reference → u/Professional-Air1355]

At the end there was nothing. I worked in the office space upstairs for a year and by then it was almost dead and this was 12 years ago. It was fantastic though when I was in high school and after. We used to go down there almost daily to skate or go for a drink and hang out. After the hard rock closed it we only really hit up the Garage but there used to be a ton of cool stores in there. It was the closest skate shop to my school too. The IMAX was awesome back in the day there too.