City looks back on glory
Calgary was a virtual unknown, until it hosted the '88 Winter Games
Gina Teel , Calgary Herald
Published: Saturday, February 09, 2008
It's been 20 years since Calgary hosted the 1988 Winter Olympics, its citizens bursting with pride, the inevitable result of being swept up in the thrill and excitement of having their fair city showcased to the world in such grand style.
Bragging rights were won by default the moment Calgary became the first Canadian city to host the Olympic Winter Games, a tremendous source of pride that came to embody the swagger and volunteer spirit of the city, at the time a bustling Prairie metropolis of 657,118 people.
There was a sense of awe underscored by anxiety, as many Calgarians secretly wondered how little old Cowtown, snared by a recession, was going to pull off what was, at 16 days, the longest Winter Games with the world watching.
"For civic leaders, the Olympics was an important coming out event," said Harry Hiller, a professor of sociology at the University of Calgary. "It was a way of making people aware of the fact that, here was a city that was, as a result of the growth that had taken place in the mid-1970s to 1980s, 'on the make.' "
Hiller, who studies the urban impact of mega-events, said the Olympic Winter Games are known for sparking the transition process to a more global image in the smaller cities that traditionally host them, and indeed have helped cities such as Lake Placid, N.Y., Lilehammer, Norway, and even Torino, Italy, transition to bigger and better things.
The 1988 Winter Olympics didn't disappoint. Calgary itself was a virtual unknown on the world stage, and in Canada was considered a bit of a regional hinterland, he said. Hosting the the Games was an important step in Calgary's development, Hiller said.
What's happened to the city since then is related to what's happened to the price of oil; the scarcity of the commodity has now put Calgary on the map in an economic sense, he said.
"The Olympics was an important first step, and what has happened since then has been an important second step in the coming of age of the city," Hiller said. Newcomers to the city may find it hard to fathom, but in 1988 Calgary's south side pretty much ended at Midnapore and anything further west of Sarcee Trail was considered a veritable outpost. Silver Springs was pretty much it to the northwest, with the average selling price of a residential home there $117,915. In the northeast, residential sales in Temple were brisk, with homes being snapped up for an average of $83,876.
In Inglewood/Ramsay, homes averaged $64,848, while the average selling price of a home in Mount Royal was $271,220. In Bel Aire/Mayfair, the average selling price was $303,181, according to Calgary Real Estate Board data.
The total value of the city's assessment base, or total property and business assessments in the City of Calgary's jurisdiction, was $17.6 billion in 1988; today it's $242 billion.
Bragg Creek and Redwood Meadows were true rural communities, separated from Calgary's west end by gently rolling farmer's fields, instead of busy commuter hubs at the end of a congested highway lined with bumper-to-bumper luxury mega-house developments. Garrison Woods didn't exist in 1988 and Garrison Green was still the barracks, recalled Richard White, director for Riddell Kurczaba Architecture & Interior Design.
White, a former long-time executive director of the Calgary Downtown Association, also recalled Chinook Centre was in need of a make-over, and the name Paskapoo was being swapped for a new moniker, Canada Olympic Park. Stephen Avenue Mall had no restored buildings and there was only one Bankers Hall - albeit under construction.
Ralph Klein was mayor and Don Getty was Alberta's premier. Calgary was indeed a different city in 1988. White said the C-Train was clean and safe, and people could walk anywhere without fear.
"You used to be able to walk anywhere, Stephen Avenue, Prince's Island, in 1988 and you would never give it a second thought. I think it's very sad that we've become a city that doesn't have that freedom," he said. Calgary may have lost its small-town charm, but on the flip side White said it's experiencing a renaissance in inner-city areas such as Inglewood.
"Right now unfortunately, it's all about traffic and homelessness and violence and transit; it's all the infrastructure problems and yet, if you really had to look at it, it's still a wonderful city," he said. Back in 1988, the city was in the throes of a recession and looking for something to celebrate. The city had gone through a boom, which had disappeared, the economy was sour and optimism was at a low. White recalled going into the Olympics, there were plenty of naysayers prepared for a disaster.
"In the end, there was this huge pride that we were able to pull it off and it was the best Olympics. We came together," he said. For White, the XV Winter Olympics served to unite all the people from across Canada who'd come to Calgary as part of the boom - himself included. In 1995, Calgary grew again when Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. moved its headquarters to Calgary, as did Shaw Communications from Edmonton and Suncor Inc. from Ontario.
"The Calgary advantage was we had lots of office space, lots of workers, lots of housing, and it was all relatively cheap," White said. There was also plenty of highway and transit capacity, he said. It lasted for about 10 years. "Basically, we had it all, and we've used it all up," White said. "Now we're trying to do catch-up." The Olympics was also Calgary's introduction to Canada in an important way, Hiller said. Calgary's place in the national economy has changed dramatically in the last several years, he said, noting perhaps the biggest indicator of this is that Prime Minister Stephen Harper moved to Calgary from Ontario, and is now representing the western perspective nationally.
"This is hugely significant to a region that always considered itself a hinterland for which it felt alienated," Hiller said. The city has changed in size and become more multicultural. One of the biggest changes here is there's been much more urban-to-urban migration in the city, which Hiller said has brought people who have more urban sophistication to the city.
As a result, downtown highrise living is far more popular than it was 20 years ago, he said. "In that sense, Calgary has become a magnet for a different type of migrant, as opposed to the typical rural-urban migrant who moved from Saskatchewan to Alberta," he said. Hiller said the Olympics brought a lot to the city - the Olympic Saddledome, Olympic Plaza, the Olympic oval (the oval was the first permanent mixed-use structure for speedskating built explicitly for the Olympics) - but in terms of impact, that ship has long since sailed. "It's over. It played an important launch role and it did serve as a marker point in the city's history, and that can't be minimized," he said.
Ditto for Canmore. Once a nondescript mining town that most people drove past on the highway to Banff, Canmore has become a playground for the wealthy and home for people commuting from Calgary.
Long before the infusion of oilpatch wealth, however, Canmore gained international exposure as the host site for cross-country skiing and biathlon during the 1988 Winter Olympic Games. The proverbial Canmore real estate lore has it that back in 1976 a home on a lot downtown could be purchased for $25,000.
Today, that same lot, with no building on it, would be worth more than $1 million. Then again, in the late 1970s there was only one paved road in town, and locals say it was two blocks long. Stuart Curran, with Coldwell Banker Banff-Canmore Realty, has been in real estate in the area since 1977. Interest in the area peaked when the Olympic announcement was made - in 1981.
"I can't tell you how many people I've spoken to over the years that said 'we always saw the gas stations when we went past on the way to Banff and didn't realize there was a town there," Curran said. "Once the Olympic announcement was made, that certainly changed that view, of most people, anyway."
From that point on, with the town's main employer, Canmore Mines Ltd., shuttered in 1979, the impetus was on recreation and that's the direction the town took. With the construction of the Nordic Centre came major infrastructure development, including a new hospital and fire station. In 1988, total residential and commercial construction was valued at $6.5 million. In 2006, the town issued 267 building permits valued at more than $200 million.
Canmore's population, meanwhile, grew from 4,419 in 1988 to about 18,000 today, with a huge percentage of them non-permanent residents. According to the 2006 Census, Canmore's non-permanent population was 4,818 - that's more than the town's permanent population in 1988. The impact on real estate values is legendary. Curran said from 1988 to 2005, there was nearly a seven per cent increase annually in real estate value in Canmore, save 2001.
There was a large inventory available on the market that year, which softened the market. In 2006, there was a 15 per cent jump and last year it probably doubled again. This year, Curran said it's looking in the seven to 10 per cent range across the board, but noted it depends on the property. As far as lots go, there were only a handful available in town on the MLS system on a recent day in February. The average price is $826,000 per lot, he said, noting there are a couple of lots over the $1 million mark that distort the figure.
"You can pretty well say a lot in 1988 was probably in the $50,000 range and now we're over the $500,000 for that same lot," he said. But house prices aren't the only things that have changed in Canmore. At one time, there was a post office that served as the gathering spot. Curran said he went from knowing every person in town to maybe one out of 10, and today one out of 20. However, quality of life has improved. There's fine restaurants, and well-stocked grocery stores. Crime is still minimal and Canmore remains a safe town.
One negative is the amount of traffic in town, especially on weekends. "It can be sort of chaotic," Curran said. "We now have five or six sets of traffic lights that didn't exist back in 1988." In spite of the changes, Canmore still has the physical aspects that attracted him in the first place. "Even though I've lived here for a long time, I still get up every morning and I look at the mountains. It's spectacular," he said.
The growth in Canmore is a bit of a Catch-22 for Gord March, who's lived in Canmore since 1976 and even worked briefly in the mine. As the owner of March's Floor Covering West, the boom has been great from a business perspective. But from a quality of life perspective, things have suffered a bit, in that it's a lot less personable in the townsite itself.
"We do get people coming out from the city and a lot of times they keep the city attitude with them when they drive," March said. "It's just unfortunate. They're good people like everybody else, but we're going at our own pace here and sometimes we get carried along with it, and you see this whole road rage stuff going on with the locals." It's harder to get a restaurant reservation but Canmore still has a pretty darned good quality of life, he said.
The biggest impact is that longtimers are cashing in the chips and leaving Canmore because it's expensive to be there, he said. Back in Calgary, White said the city of 1 million could use an event like the Olympics now to bond all the newcomers who missed out on the 1988 experience.
There's roughly 300,000 people that have arrived in Calgary in the last decade who have no real connection with the city, he said. White suggested Calgary could rally around the Stampede, which will celebrate its 100th birthday in 2012. "We're a teenager going through a growth spurt, and it's ugly and it's awkward," he said.
"But if we could just find some major event, with a huge volunteer component that everybody feels a part of, it would reinforce our can-do attitude."
gteel@theherald.canwest.com
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