That is indeed a fustercluck ####-show. I think part of the planning there was a presumption that the parkade would see a lot more use than it does. Anecdotally it's funny (strange, not ha-ha) how many people I've talked to about that store who
don't even know it has a parkade. Once I start describing, "Okay, so y'know there's an entrance from 17th Street, right? If you turn left into the Home Depot parking lot..."
"OH! Yeah, there
is a ramp there, isn't there? I thought that was a loading dock or for staff or something."
"*facepalm*"
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sr. Mints
I don't remember when they were building it how it went down. The Highlander Hotel was dozed, but the Highlander liquor store was still there for a few years afterwards? Did they excavate the parkade first?
I do remember the Habitat for Humanity townhouses on the north side of the property went in a few years afterwards.. I don't think the parkade extends beneath them.
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FYI to answer these burning questions the City maintains an online repository of aerial imagery going back to the mid-1920s.
https://maps.calgary.ca/calgaryimagery/ 
If you go to the site on 16th Ave, you can see how:
- it started off as empty fields until the 1953 image, where there were houses on the north side of the block along 17th Ave.
- The hotel went up in the late-'50s/early-'60s, and shows up in the 1962 image.
- By '66 three of the houses on 17th had already been bulldozed to add more parking for the hotel,
- by 1972 another couple houses were gone, and,
- by 1975 they'd taken over the entire block save three houses at the corner of 17th and 17th.
- By 1979 those three houses had been bulldozed too, and in the 1982 image it was paved over parking lot.
- The liquor store building at the corner of 16th and 19th Street didn't get built until the late-'80s/early-'90s, and shows up for the first time on the 1995 imagery.
- By 2004 the hotel and liquor store were demolished and the Home Depot quickly went up in their place.
- You can compare the 2003 and 2005 images to see that the parkade doesn't extend under the townhouses (
), and,
- They were done by 2007, only a couple years after the Home Depot opened.