Round 40 years since development started on what would turn out to be one in all downtown Calgary’s most iconic gathering areas, work is getting underway to reimagine the subsequent iteration of Olympic Plaza.
Officers with the Calgary Municipal Land Company (CMLC), Werklund Centre, the Werklund household, the Authorities of Alberta and the Metropolis of Calgary broke floor on the Olympic Plaza Transformation challenge Thursday.
“It is a city-shaping, city-building challenge, that’s going to impression this metropolis for generations,” CMLC president Kate Thompson stated.
“That is taking a 40-year-old plaza and seeing it take its subsequent steps into a contemporary, inclusive and accessible place for Calgarians and guests alike to return and rejoice.”
The plaza, which was constructed forward of the 1988 Winter Olympics for medal ceremonies, was demolished in late 2024 to make approach for the revitalization challenge.
The $70 million challenge will function a brand new pavilion with meals and beverage choices, public washrooms and a brand new inexperienced house. It is going to additionally embody house that may maintain main occasions of as much as 5,000 folks, in addition to a splash pad that may be transformed right into a skating rink throughout the winter months.
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Officers stated town’s Olympic legacy will probably be included with a 12-metre tall function that resembles the ‘sunflake,’ the the official emblem of the 1988 Olympic Winter Video games.
The challenge is a part of the $660 million enlargement of the Werklund Centre, previously referred to as Arts Commons, a brand new 170,000-square-foot theatre facility at present underneath development, which homes the Osten-Victor Playhouse, and the 200-seat studio theatre.
Each initiatives are anticipated to be full in 2028, with Werklund Centre officers set to handle the brand new plaza.
“We’re extending our mandate that we at present have inside this facility as a civic companion of the Metropolis of Calgary,” stated Werklund Centre President & CEO Alex Sarian. “We’re extending that mandate and that mission not simply to the brand new constructing throughout the road but additionally to Olympic Plaza.”
At an occasion celebrating the ground-breaking Thursday, Thompson informed the group the challenge is a part of “an ecosystem of change” within the metropolis’s downtown core.
That change features a sequence of office-to-residential conversion initiatives, Scotia Place, in addition to renovations to the Glenbow Museum, and a modernization of Stephen Avenue.
Thom Mahler, town’s downtown technique director, stated lots of the initiatives at present underway have been talked about on the metropolis for many years, and fall underneath the “identical collective imaginative and prescient” of downtown revitalization.
Nevertheless, Mahler acknowledged there have been considerations about disruptions from the development work all through the core.
“We try to do one of the best as we will to coordinate, and a part of that’s communication, and ensuring folks know nicely upfront what’s coming,” he stated. “It’s a stability however we additionally attempt to maintain the concentrate on what’s constructive… it’ll be price a number of the headache.”
Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas, who referred to as the Werklund Centre enlargement and Olympic Plaza transformation “important infrastructure,” stated there may be upwards of $20 billion in each private and non-private funding within the metropolis’s downtown core over the subsequent decade.
Farkas argued investments in downtown revitalization assist “fill workplace towers,” which in flip improves town’s backside line by way of property taxes.
“You do not want to go to Calgary’s downtown to be the direct beneficiary of investments like this,” Farkas stated. “A safer, vibrant downtown finally will maintain your taxes affordable.”
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