As agreements were reached on a portion of the Green Line LRT project, uncertainty surrounding the downtown alignment has a trio of real estate and business organizations in downtown Calgary looking for a seat at the table.
Commercial real estate firms NAIOP and Boma Calgary, as well as the Calgary Downtown Association (CDA), have written a letter to the Alberta government and the city, requesting that a “commercial real estate industry advisory committee” be formed to provide input on future alignment .
“Members of NAIOP, BOMA and CDA own and operate billions of dollars in real estate investments in Calgary,” the letter says. “We maintain that the Green Line must provide connectivity, not harm property values, and be built to support the city’s future needs.”
In an interview with Global News, CDA Executive Director Mark Garner said the Green Line is vital for transportation to the city center with Calgary's growing population.
“If there are considerations and we need to come up with other potential solutions that will be presented, we need to be at that table so we can understand what the potential impacts are to downtown,” Garner said.
On Thursday, Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek and Alberta Transportation Minister Devin Dreeshen jointly announced an agreement under which several existing contracts will be maintained and design work will continue on the line between Victoria Park and Shepard, in the southeast of the city.
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Both sides said they “remain optimistic” that a southeast LRT line can be built, after Calgary city council voted to kill the $6.2 billion Green Line project last month.
This was in response to a Sept. 3 letter from Dreeshen announcing the province's intention to withdraw its share of $1.53 billion in funding due to the project's reduced scope, but its budget increased by $705 million.
Provincial funding has been reallocated and design agreements also mean 700 jobs can be restored.
However, uncertainty remains over how the Green Line will extend into the city center, with the original tunneling plans becoming a stumbling block for the province.
“The additional additional costs and uncertainty of tunneling is something we knew would be cost excessive,” Dreeshen said in an interview Thursday. “We simply could not, as a province, finance $1.53 billion in a project with all this uncertainty.”
Engineering firm AECOM was hired by the province to find an alternative alignment, either at-grade or elevated through the core, that connects to the Red and Blue lines, the new Events Center and southeast Calgary communities.
“I think there are a lot of opinions about realignment, what it should be and the connection points,” Garner said. “That’s why NAIOP, BOMA and CDA need to be at the table.”
David Wallach of Barclay Street Real Estate agrees that contributions from commercial real estate companies should be considered in a new alignment.
Wallach was one of several industry experts who provided recommendations to the City of Calgary on how the Green Line should pass through the core, advising against an elevated route.
“We recommend that if you do this to a bridge, it will be a disaster for commercial real estate values in that area,” Wallach said.
“It has to be a tunnel and it has to be underground in the city center.”
Wallach said concerns about an elevated route include blocking natural light for street-level retail and disruptions to train passage along the Plus-15 level floors in office towers.
The city also studied an at-grade alignment for the LRT line, but determined that stations and trains would not fit in the north-south blocks as they are shorter than the city center's east-west blocks.
“If you’re looking at grade, you’re redirecting traffic lanes to the LRT. This is a given. There’s no way around it,” said David Cooper of Leading Mobility Consulting.
In a statement to Global News, a spokesperson for the Minister of Transportation said work is ongoing with the City of Calgary “to address stakeholder considerations.”
“As we progress, our department will reach out to local groups looking for opportunities to provide direct feedback, which will help inform AECOM’s proposed alignment and our next steps,” the statement read.
Dreeshen told Global News that AECOM's revised alignment will be made public by the end of the year.
