Quote:
Originally Posted by Shazam
Vic Park is getting busier these days. Village Ice Cream is great.
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How often do 18,000 customers show up at Village Ice Cream, though?
According to the City of Calgary traffic flow maps for 2019 (the most recent available to the public), traffic on 12 Ave. west of 4 St. is about 10,000 vehicles per day, and about the same on 4 St. going north. Let's be generous and suppose that 80 percent of the total volume of people there are going through on foot (they ain't). That makes 100,000. Then triple that for the development in the arena district.
We are now at 300,000 people passing by the arena every day. Are only
three of those people actually going inside?
OK, obviously Parallex doesn't literally mean ‘99.999%’ (though that is a peeve of mine). Still – what other attraction in that area is going to draw 18,000 people at a time, outside of Stampede week? It's a stated assumption that the arena is going to draw traffic to the restaurants and other businesses in the district, not the other way round. People aren't being drawn to the arena so they can stand outside gawking at the facade.
As long as the exterior of the arena is at least inoffensive and doesn't repel passersby, it's doing its job. Better would be nice, of course – and I do get that 1970s vibe from the renders we've seen in this thread so far. But I'm not seeing any dealbreakers.