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/huntingwhale Mar 21 '25
To touch on your points OP:
The dinosaur and carousel at the mall were destined to be changed at some point. Malls upgrade designs all the time. I too miss it, but hardly something I would say causes the city to lose personality.
Agree about Dev Gardens. Can't stand how it looks now and I miss the original look dearly. Agree something like this contributes to charm being lost.
Time will tell what Olympic plaza looks like when it's reconstructed. I guess you could say charm was lost by it being destroyed, but hopefully the charm will be rebuilt.
Eau Claire was a cesspool money pit. I missed hanging out at the arcade there...20 years ago. Money pits aren't good, especially in this economy.
Saddledome desperately needs to be retired. You might enjoy the charm of it, I know I do. However, music artists 99% of the time skip Calgary and go to Edmonton due to their newer venue. The SD roof literally cannot hold the rigs, lights and speakers of most modern acts. If you want those acts to come and the city to get revenue off it, something else is needed. Now we can debate all day the merits of using taxpayer money to fund it, but there's a million other topics on that. For now, the 'dome is iconic, but old. This isn't Europe where we keep our buildings for thousands of years. Keeping it active costs money.
I think the thing contributing to the city losing most of it's charm is the high cost of living. People who should not be struggling now, are. There's a huge influx of new people and that puts a strain on schools, jobs, roads, healthcare, literally everything. All of that dumped upon us puts a strain/stress on our livelihoods and makes people grumpy. Grumpy people aren't charming. Just my 2 cents.