Developer Rod Leonard in one of his newly developed retail spaces in Calgary, on July 10.Todd Korol/The Globe and Mail
Increasingly, cities across Canada move toward the creation of complete neighbourhoods where spaces to live, work, learn and play are within walking distance from each other – and Calgary is no exception.
In 2019, the City of Calgary launched Next Generation Planning, a program that integrates nine initiatives to incentivize a wider breadth of uses across the city’s residential neighbourhoods, and transform them from sleepy bedroom communities to vibrant hubs of activity with actions ranging from public realm improvements to updated local area plans.
However, livability and vitality require more than a mix of compatible uses, says Neal LaMontagne, a city planner and associate lecturer at the University of Alberta.
“What is livable is not something that’s easily measured,” he says, pointing at the difference between uses that simply satisfy a basic need, such as a grocery store, and those that are also conducive to social interaction.
“[Retail] should also be a place for community,” Mr. LaMontagne says. “It’s the classic idea that we go down to the neighbourhood coffee shop and we see neighbours – it supports social life, not just everyday life.”
This is something that smaller, mom-and-pop shops are often able to achieve, as these businesses tend to feel like they’re part of the community and contribute to the sense of place of a neighbourhood, Mr. LaMontagne explains. “There is something richer [when] an enterprise feels part of the community, because you feel like you know the owners, it serves a need that can’t be replaced by a larger corporation.”
To incentivize a heterogenous mix of uses and business types in a new building, Calgary’s land-use bylaw regulates façade widths and floor areas, as smaller commercial retail units (CRUs) can provide the affordability and flexibility required by independent businesses. However, it is developers who ultimately determine what’s the most viable mix of CRU sizes.
“[Developers] want to lease space quickly,” Mr. LaMontagne says. “But they also want to lease with the least amount of hassle – and this where the rub is. The easiest way to lease is to a known tenant of national scale where there’s existing relationships.”
This situation often comes at the expense of a neighbourhood’s livability, as the national chains expected to lease a commercial unit require an area of at least 1,300 square-foot, a size that prices out many mom-and-pop shops.
But not all developers are the same, Mr. LaMontagne notes, pointing at exceptions where developers are “willing to take a gamble on these kinds of [smaller] businesses because they believe they build community.”
Indeed, despite the risks, some Calgary developers are tapping on the potential of smaller CRUs, and reusing older structures in residential neighbourhoods in ways that benefit local businesses and residents alike.
Five years ago, Rod Leonard, founder of Leonard Development Group, envisioned a unique form of retail space that would become The Shops at Avenue Thirty Four, a state-of-the-art commercial strip comprised by 30 CRUs spread across three buildings: a seventies fourplex, and two character homes built in the 1910s.
Initially, Mr. Leonard’s plan was to transform a single character home into a live-work space for his mom, an experienced florist. But when the flower shop opened, he realized there was potential for growth.
“We got a lot of people popping in and asking us if we were going to be doing more of the small shops, because they wanted to open their store in Marda Loop,” Mr. Leonard says. “But they were looking for a bit of a smaller space.”
As redevelopment steadily transforms Marda Loop, an up-and-coming commercial area in Calgary’s south, a growing number of businesses are setting up shop in the neighbourhood. But as larger storefronts on the ground floor of new apartment buildings attract established tenants, such as banking institutions and pharmacy chains, Mr. Leonard saw the need of providing smaller units that would fit the needs of independent businesses.
“A lot of developments are renting out 1,000-, 2,000-, 3,000-square-foot spaces,” Mr. Leonard says. “And the rent is so expensive that you can only really attract the larger chains.”
Repurposing the existing structures along 34th Avenue SW allowed Mr. Leonard to create CRUs whose sizes range between 120 and 550 square feet, and lease out these units to unique tenants, including a yarn shop, a men’s clothing store, a hair salon, a therapist’s office, a speakeasy and a French café.
“I think that’s what Marda Loop was missing: a spot where we could bring more local shops into the area.”
But Mr. Leonard’s brainchild does more than satisfy the basic needs of neighbours and small-business owners. The European-inspired commercial strip also creates a place where the serendipitous encounters that build community happen.
“Community starts to happen in places of ‘weak links.’” Mr. LaMontagne explains, noting that weak links are the social interactions with strangers that can keep residents from feeling disconnected or isolated. “Retail has a small role in that because that’s one of those places that we identify with.”
Like Mr. Leonard, other property owners in Calgary are capitalizing on the potential of smaller CRUs while revitalizing formerly derelict areas.
Since 2016, residents of Crescent Heights, an inner-city neighbourhood just north of the Bow River, have witnessed a commercial renaissance in their neighbourhood, as Certus Developments, a real estate developer, began leasing out underperforming commercial space to independent businesses that were just staring out.
“When we started filling out Tigerstedt Block, it was really focusing on mom-and-pop kind of small businesses,” says Alice Lam, a portfolio manager at Certus Development, noting that the size of the commercial spaces had been a deterrent for national chains and franchises to lease a unit in the 1928 building.
With CRUs ranging in size between 500 and 1,000 square feet, the Tigerstedt Block sat mostly vacant for nearly a decade, but this challenge has become an opportunity, as leasing these units to independent businesses has had a positive effect on the neighbourhood and its livability.
“These individual mom-and-pop businesses that are more unique, offering a service that isn’t available elsewhere, drew their own clientele, and [became] a destination-type business,” Ms. Lam says, adding that “not only were they a destination for people all over the city, but the local community started seeing Tigerstedt as a community hub – as a place where you could get coffee, food, hang out, get a beer afterwards, or do a bit of shopping.”