COP Lands to be developed into shopping mall (Trinity@Winsport)
 

Funny, I though this had been set aside for a park. More details here.

A great project for those of you who love traffic circles.

Also note the deletion of another leaf from the Sarcee-16th cloverleaf.


http://i58.tinypic.com/246sxzm.jpg

Nothing about this project excites me.

So they're going to create even more of a CF getting in and out of COP? Also this looks a lot like a typical power centre, no thanks.

Kinda wish they would as much effort as they put into getting this development moving into the mountain biking trails....

And then there were six...:uhh:

Highstreet (aka Calgary West)
Bingham Crossing
West Calgary Market Place
Tanger Outlets
Greenbriar (aka Greenwich, I heard this is being rebooted)
and now this...

From Calaway Park to the Sarcee Trail interchange will be the most over-retailed strip in the country, to say nothing of a further expansion of Market Mall and the West Campus Lands.

Looks like a decent layout, I like the village node they've incorporated. The amount of hotel space is surprising though.

I always thought the hills surrounding COP would've made great terrain for a golf course. It's a shame that the economics don't work very well in these parts without a real estate component.

Screw a golf course, there are already some exceptional mountain bike trails in there. Maybe not economic, but a pretty fine use of that land -- almost accessible as single track all the way from Pumphouse Theatre. I wish COP would focus development to the west (if anywhere) since the eventual ring road will likely destroy all natural environment out in that direction anyway.

I didn't about this. What info do you have on that?

Ugh. I've always loved the approach to Calgary from this direction. Coming up McLeod trail is horrific, similar to entering Edmonton from the south. I despise city entrances that are massive shopping centres.

The Diverging Diamond Interchange at Bowfort looks interesting. I'm guessing that funding (partial? full?) of this interchange will be part of the DP for this project. Poor CoC has been having open houses and doing studies on this intersection upgrade for decades only to keep pushing back it's construction. :(

Agreed on the mountain biking comment. That area is probably the best single track in City limits. Calgary Corporate Challenge is doing their mountain bike event out there, plus it hosts the odd race.

That's gonna meet a lot of community resistance.

Looks great for what it is. Mixed-use with hotel, office, retail, and multi-res, lots of street frontage, almost all underground parking, lots of park space and based on the renderings we saw awhile back high quality landscaping and improvements.

I believe Winsport is partnering on this, so will be a boost in revenue for them as well.

I suspect some community resistance to this plan. It's a fantastic green space as is.

You can't really get more highway, auto-oriented than this. It's only saving grace is it will help increase congestion for suburban commuters in that area, eventually forcing some of them to reconsider their increasingly horrible commute and move into the rapidly densifying Montgomery and other inner city neighbourhoods.

I hope this doesn't go ahead, would love to see that area stay as green space.

I am a fan of the SPUI for Bowfort/TCH. Is this what is currently planned for that upgrade?

I would rather see an intensive walkable development on all the parking lots at the base of the ski hill instead of big box sprawl.

Some comments...

The deletion of another leaf from the Sarcee-16th cloverleaf - that leaf probably doesn't carry a whole bunch of traffic right now (EB TransCanada onto NB Sarcee) so to change the traffic pattern that is currently using that leaf won't be a big deal.

The lands that this proposal is designated for - pretty much unused. Anyone that's doing any kind of hiking/biking is doing it farther up on the slopes to the south and most of what is being proposed to be built on is currently open land with virtually nothing in the way of forest/trees on it. Maybe some dog walkers use this area but beyond that I can say that I've never ever seen any really heavy use of this area when I've passed by there.

Community resistance - resistance to what? Open and pretty much barren land of which some probably used to be farmed? This isn't the same as the big natural area called Nose Hill by any stretch of the imagination and for the record, even a good portion of Nose Hill is reclaimed areas. Which communities? Bowness which sits to the north across the big paved barrier called the TransCanada Highway? Cougar Ridge to the south which will still have access to all of the wooded areas up top where most people will be hiking/enjoying nature?

Whether this is the best use might be up for debate, but I don't have a huge problem with that land being developed. It's sat barren for decades, and it would mostly likely continue to do so.

So what would be a best use?

My sister-in-law and her husband/family have resided in Tuscany for 19 or 20 years now. They like shopping at big malls or the Crowfoot mess. They didn't mind that their two kids had to be bussed throughout their K-12 education. They didn't care that they had no services of any kind for at least the first 5 years that they lived in their community. They drive to do anything/everything and don't have an issue with that.

And guess what - there are plenty of people like this in Calgary and those type of people would quite welcome a proposal like this in their community or on their community's doorstep. Drop a road link down from Cougar Ridge and I'd bet that most Cougar Ridge residents would be climbing all over each other to come shop in such a complex. Bowness - maybe not so much because Bowness has it's own interesting array of shops/services scattered about in it's boundaries.

I think some people may have had the expectation that the Winsport land would be developed for park or sporting use, given Winsport's mandate. As for best use, I have a hard time seeing this as being an attractive location for retail, as it is completely isolated from the residential areas as you have noted. I guess they are hoping the movie theatre will draw people in, but that didn't work for Eau Claire. Anyway, the new proposal is much better than the one they had circulated about 5 years ago. I'm personally OK with it.

I don't think that interchange is big enough. You could probably still walk from the north side of 16th into this area. In fact you can use the ultra direct regional pathway being proposed to do so. There are also not enough multilane roundabouts in there. Everyone knows that roundabouts need to be even bigger. If small roundabouts are all the rage, then bigger ones are even better.

So dumb.