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Originally Posted by timun
I don't care if I sound rude: what a bunch of whataboutery nonsense.
curves: go read the document I linked to here. Read it carefully. The gist is this was previously private land that was transferred to the City's possession 40 years ago, with the caveat that they weren't allowed to do anything else with it. The owner of the Glenmore Landing mall was obliged to maintain it. Now said owner wants to do something with it, and the City wants housing built, so they're going to sell it back to the owner to build apartments. For how much? Probably the appraised value, which you can go look up on https://maps.calgary.ca/myproperty.
There's no grand conspiracy here to enrich private enterprise by the selling of public lands on the cheap. This land in question is a couple patches of grass between the mall, 14th Street and 90th Ave: it's totally useless—and worthless—to anyone else but RioCan. |
Sure, I will concede that for sure. Rio Can will buy the land for cheap and then be able to develop it. This is a massive development. Totally fine.
But any fool who doesn't see what happens with developers or with the politically connected, is just a random fool. If you put biases aside, you can clearly see where it happens.
Midfield Park Trailer Park from 7-8 years ago. The big issue here with the location of utilities and piping. Absolutely nothing could be done about keeping what in essence, are poor people who nobody cares for, in their trailer homes and in the area. Fast forward to recent news and the city has approved a very very nice plan for the area. Lot's of money to be made here and truth is, nobody want's trailer trash next to new development. I guess water and utility lines really were not the reason for the eviction. It's not like the city is having this parcel of land be redeveloped for really low income and home ownership housing. It's going really nice.
https://www.bestcalgaryhomes.com/mid...y-coming-soon/
Richmond Green Golf Course: This beautiful parcel of land has literally a BILLION things going for it from a development standpoint. The city decided to close the course because of some financial losses of $150k a year, tough to quantify sometimes but sure, a loss is a loss. There was also some maintenance issues with the water lines etc. Tough times in 2019 required the city to get it's budget house in order and this prime piece of real estate was where council decided it was going to cut bait.
https://calgaryherald.com/news/local...er-2019-season
Land was set to be sold at $15million but with no successful offers, will probably be sold at a significant discount to a developer who will make big time bank on this project. Does it not make more sense for the city to develop this land via CMLC for low income housing, drug rehab or any other of the city priorities for housing? Na, why have bums kicking around when we can sell prime land for cheap. Just wait until this property get's sold for next to nothing.
Let's move over to development going on near Shaganappi golf course. Brookfield Residential has started construction of a beautiful piece of land where previously was also low income, trailer style home. Transit, downtown close, views, parks and more are all there. This appears to have been a private sale to a private developer, so I don't have many issues.
What I can see happening almost without a doubt, is that there will be more and more of a push to close Shaganappi Golf course citing "subsidies of golf courses" , have the city sell the land for cheap and have a lot more development occur by private developers.
I have no problem with development and private developers. I do have an issue where city council and admin appear to be selling off city owned assets for cheap so that other's can benefit.
This happens at the provincial level and federal level across the board. This is not anything new but sometimes when it's in your face, it kinda makes people mad.