CONVENTION SPACERACE
CITY URGED TO BUY DOWNTOWN LAND FOR MEETING SPACE
Calgary’s convention authority doesn’t know yet if Ottawa and the province will help fund a new study for a facility expansion — let alone the centre itself — but they want city council to commit millions of dollars to buy downtown land for a bigger complex.
The mayor and councillors are wary of the request before they formally see it, and it’s not clear there’s enough space anywhere in the core for a massive new convention centre, according to one prominent realtor.
Officials with the Telus Convention Centre, frustrated that they’re losing business to smaller cities with bigger event halls and actively plotting expansion since 2009, will make the closed-door pitch to council sometime soon, keeping the proposed site a secret to prevent the land price from soaring. But they want city council to secure a location within the year.
“If we don’t move soon, there won’t be many parcels of land on which to build a facility that is in close proximity to the two facilities we already have in Calgary,” said WestJet CEO Greg Saretsky, a convention authority director.
They revived their dormant expansion campaign Tuesday at a launch for the centre’s coming 40th anniversary, and began urging Calgary business leaders to help make a bigger convention centre a political priority. The convention board is pitching the site acquisition as a “no-risk” proposition for council.
“You buy land on this market, are you going to lose money on it? I don’t think so,” authority chairman Bob Holmes said in an interview. “If it isn’t used for a convention centre, it will be used for some other civic purpose or it can be sold.”
Convention delegates demand a site at the city’s core, and close to major hotels, he said. “The pace of development in downtown Calgary is such that sites that we were looking at even three or four years ago are now tied up.”
The convention authority launched a $1.15-million feasibility and marketing study on an expansion in 2009, but council — which funded that study — has asked for a more detailed study, and deficit-mired provincial and federal governments have appeared unwilling to entertain big grants for a new facility.
The group is now seeking $1.5 million each from the Redford and Harper governments for a more detailed second-phase study that would also identify the next facility’s cost, and how much taxpayer and private money would have go into it. Without having the land, the next study may become a moot point, Holmes cautioned.
The convention authority argues that Calgary is now Canada’s fourthlargest urban centre with its 10th-largest convention centre, behind Winnipeg, Quebec City, Regina and Niagara Falls. Meanwhile, Halifax’s ongoing expansion will soon push Calgary to 11th. The Telus centre has lost the ability to compete for major gatherings — and the spending dollars those events bring with them — although the BMO Centre on the Stampede grounds is another major event draw.
Saretsky’s breakfast speech attracted various downtown business and hospitality figures, along with a small handful of politicians, including former mayor Dave Bronconnier.
His successor remains skeptical about the growth ambitions, and isn’t keen on spending money Calgary doesn’t have on downtown land.
“I am not convinced in any way that building a new convention centre makes sense,” Mayor Naheed Nenshi said. “We may have missed the boat on this. Canada may have too much convention centre space.”
Two councillors were at the campaign launch. Sean Chu said he’s wary of the cost but wants to do his homework, while Jim Stevenson called an expanded convention hall a “nice to have.”
Four years ago, the convention board mused about a $300-million facility that would triple its current event space, but Holmes isn’t saying what a revised project would look like. The authority had also fancied an adjacent site, but there’s not enough room alongside city and heritage buildings north of the current centre, and a developer has planned a pair of office highrises straddling the Calgary Tower to the facility’s south.
Few vacant or underused land parcels remain in the core, and their best use would be for office or condo towers, said Greg Kwong, regional managing director for CBRE, a commercial realtor. “Even if there were some sites that are available, I can’t think of one site that’s big enough to accommodate — I’m guessing they probably need at least 100,000 square feet (per floor),” he said.
Kwong reckons an East Village property may be viable, though that’s far from downtown’s hotel cluster.