Unconventional Panel: Ideas to revive Calgary's downtown core

Despite news a Silicon Valley tech company will set up shop in downtown Calgary, more than 10 million square feet of unused office space remains in the city.

The Calgary Eyeopener's Unconventional Panel weighs in on creative ways Calgary could convert empty buildings downtown.

This week's panel included George Brookman, CEO of West Canadian Industries, Anila Lee Yuen, CEO of the Centre for Newcomers and Steve Hodges, who works in community engagement at the Alberta College of Art and Design.

Q: What's your reaction to these vacancy numbers?

Brookman: Within the next five-to-sevenyears, someone will start a new office building and everything will be filled. However, I think we need to find a use for some of these offices.

I think if we want people to move downtown and we want young families to live in condos, we better build some schools downtown and we could use a couple of floors of office space as elementary and junior high schools.

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Yuen: It is really sad to go downtown and you don't see that same hustle and bustle that we're used to. There's a lot of industry we could have there, like hydroponics. There's a lot of work in urban agriculture.

I think it would be a great place to add to our agriculture industry and great for our children to see what that actually looks like.

Hodges:LikeRocketSpace, Aspen properties is doing a lot of redevelopment with theEncanabuilding having a golf green and I think other property management companies should work on redeveloping these spaces into creative campuses. Education, gardening and tech companies.

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We could be Silicon Valley North or Silicon Rocky Mountains.

Brookman: We have a huge coming problem. People my age and older who need a place to stay as seniors. Is there any way we could convert some of these floors into residential seniors care? Right in the heart of downtown.

Yuen: Affordable housing is always an issue. There are three immigrant agencies downtown. I think it would be so much easier for newcomers to access those agencies if they were living downtown.

Q: There's more than 1.5 million square feet of office space coming over the next couple of years. Do we have a glut?

Brookman: Yes. Again. It happened in the 1970s and 1980s.

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Yuen: It's like Economics 101, right? When the economy is like this, isn't it the time to build?

Hodges: These ideas inject a new energy into our core. I can literally do a run down Stephen Avenue because there's no one else there. It's a ghost town.

If we helped our newcomers and our aging population, that's going to bring people in and you're going to see grocery stores and see the energy where people will want to be in our core 24/7.

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With files from the Calgary Eyeopener