Embracing Calgary's +15 Indoor Walkway Is Critical To Downtown Vitality
Recently I innocently posted on Twitter an couple of images of Hong Kong’s elevated walkway system, adding that Calgary needs to embrace and enhance its +15 system as part of the revitalization of our downtown. I was quickly challenged by a few Calgary based Twitter influencers that the +15 system was not the way to revitalize our downtown and “the +15 was built for and only used by privileged Calgarians in suits.” Yikes.
FYI: Calgary’s +15 is a series of 86 bridges (15 feet above the road) that links 100+ buildings (office towers, hotels, shopping, entertainment and parkades) over about 50 blocks in downtown Calgary to create a 16-km indoor walkway.
If managed creatively the +15 walkway will attract not only more people to work in the downtown, but to live in the downtown core and become a tourist attraction.
Calgary’s +15 walkway is an urban oasis that makes its downtown a more attractive place to work today and in the future could make it a more attractive place to live. It is a critical part of Calgary’s downtown advantage that is misunderstood by many urbanists in Calgary and beyond. It is enjoyed by people of all ages and backgrounds.
Downtown Workers Love the +15
In its heyday it was used by about 160,000 downtown workers and another 50,000 daily visitors (students, shopping, dining, cultural events, medical and professional appointments). Today, due to COVID and empty office buildings it is less busy, but still an integral part of Downtown Calgary’s unique sense of place.
After lots of back and forth one of the key “+15 bashers” admitted he has never worked downtown and wasn’t aware of the magnitude of their use. Near the end of the debate, Thom Mahler the City of Calgary’s Downtown revitalization leader, chimed in saying surveys have shown the +15 is well loved by Calgarians. As the Calgary Downtown Associations’ Executive Director from the mid ‘90s to mid ‘00s, I knew this and have always been puzzled by the negative attitude some urbanists and urban planners have to our +15 system (both those living in Calgary and visiting.)
Talk to almost anybody who works downtown today or has in the past and they will tell you how much they love the +15 system.
One urbanist in the debate said he would only build in downtown Calgary if he didn’t have to build a +15 bridge, which he is welcome to do. However, most experienced downtown developers know having a connection to the +15 is critical to the success of any building. One of the reasons the Eau Claire Market failed was the it was that none of the office workers would venture out into the cold in the winter for coffee or lunch. Not the only reason, but a major factor.
The City of Calgary would be wise to embrace and enhance the downtown' +15 walkway as an amenity to not only attract new businesses to locate downtown, but also to make it a more attractive place for to live.
Office Ghetto
One of the biggest objections to the +15 system is that is sucks the life out of the street. While I would argue the reason there is no street life in Calgary’s downtown core (Central Business District) is because it is dominated by 50+ large corporate office buildings, which have a minimalist lobby dominated by a huge bank of elevators and security desk. Around the world, most streets and/or districts that are dominated by office towers are ghettos in the evenings and weekends. Calgary is no different.
Trying to convert those ground floor lobbies into something more pedestrian friendly is going to be damn near impossible. Recently six downtown office buildings have undergone major renovations to make them more funky and playful to attract the tech start-ups that are being touted as the saviours of downtowns everywhere. However, their new lobbies do nothing to invite the public to come in, enhance the street life in front of them and/or make the street more pedestrian friendly. Also the concentration of office towers in our downtown creates wind tunnels and cast shadows on the sidewalks year-round; this further reduces the pedestrian friendliness at street level.
Downtown Calgary has one of the highest concentrations of office towers in North America, it is like a mini Manhattan.
Not A Public Space
Another objection was that the +15 is not a public space, free for everyone to wander as they wish 24/7. In all fairness the +15 is open to the public during business and shopping hours.
Yes the +15 is patrolled by private security who can ask people who are sleeping and misbehaving to leave the buildings, but the same can happen in City Hall, Municipal Building and other government buildings. And let’s not forget many City of Calgary Parks are not open 24/7.
Density vs Diversity
Others suggested Calgary’s downtown core is not dense enough to support both street life and an elevated or underground walkway like Hong Kong or Toronto or Montreal’s underground pedestrian system. But I beg to differ. Calgary’s downtown core has about 50 million square feet of office, hotel, residential, retail and entertainment space in about 50 square blocks, making it a very dense place, on par with the above cities. What it lacks is diversity, as 80% is office space, which is empty evenings and weekends.
Downtown +15 Advantage
One of the advantages of Downtown Calgary as a place to work is our +15 system. I have heard 1,000s of times how it is a great place for networking, as you are always running into people you have been meaning to get in touch with. One of the conveniences of working downtown is how concentrated, comprehensive and efficient it is. You have easy access to your banker, accountant and business partners all within a 10-minute walk of each other. And in the winter you don’t even have to put on a coat. Try that in Houston or Dallas, where corporate headquarters a scattered around the city.
At noon, you can easily wander from the edges of the downtown to do some shopping at the CORE, meet friends for lunch at 100s of restaurants, stroll Stephen Avenue Walk or Bow River Promenade and drop off your clothes at the dry cleaners and do a little banking on the way. You can also easily visit your dentist, doctor and other medical professionals as they are also available downtown. You can also walk to the nearest exit to your train or your bus stop via the +15, then pop outside.
The +15 is full of cozy meeting places, small cafes, gardens or off-the-beaten path sitting areas if you just want some along time to read, think or reflect. It is has dozens of food courts that function like indoor plazas with a variety of food options and places to sit.
For downtown workers, the +15 is also a convenient way to get to downtown outdoor public spaces like Stephen Avenue pedestrian mall, Olympic Plaza, Hotchkiss Gardens, Prince’s Island Park and Bow River Promenade.
The +15 walkway enhances the use of the Downtown’s outdoor public spaces, as well as its shopping and dining spots, especially from November to April, when people can walk as far as possible in the +15 system and them pop outside to where they want to go.
Lesson Learn: Our downtown is a 15-minute community for workers.
There are dozens of places where the street and the +15 system connect to allow the public to easily walk to parks, plazas, shops, cafes, appointments and transit.
+15 Urban Living
As the City and developers looks at ways to add more residential buildings to the downtown core, they would be wise to make sure they have connections to the +15 system as that would be one of the biggest advantages of the living in core.
In 2000, Calgary filmmaker Gary Burns did a spoof on Calgary’s +15 system where two workers challenged each other to live and work in the downtown without going outside for a month. It is often pointed to as an indication of what is wrong with the system. However, Burns like many others underestimated the value of the +15 in making our downtown a very walkable, pedestrian friendly place for downtown workers and in the future residents.
In reality, very few downtown core residential buildings have a +15 connection. But my bet is any new residential building with a +15 connection will rent quicker and/or sell faster than one without. Developers building new downtown residential buildings would be wise to find a way to connect their building to downtown’s amazing +15 walkway as a means of differentiating their new homes from those on the periphery of the downtown core.
FYI: Calgary City Planner Paul Mas who did his PhD on the importance of residential buildings to downtown vitality told me back in the ‘90s that his research found in most cities only between 5 and 10% of the population live living in and around the downtown core.
In Vancouver, 110, 000 people live in the downtown peninsula or about 18% of the City of Vancouver’s population, but only 2.5% of the metro Vancouver’s population. In Calgary if you take approximately the same square kilometers, our downtown residential population is about 75,000 or about 5.4% of our metro population, twice Vancouver’s. There is not as much room for residential growth in our downtown as many urbanists would like us to believe.
Link Vision With Reality
Modern urbanists and planners would be wise to link vision with reality. While they have a vision of Calgary’s downtown being like a European city with vibrant street life, year-round outdoor patios and no cars, in reality Calgary is not a European city. Calgarians for the most part live in large suburban homes, with backyard patios for outdoor living and lots of parks and pathways nearby. We have a much higher car ownership than Europeans and we prefer to drive rather than take transit. While urbanist tell us this is not sustainable, for the average Calgarian this is their desired lifestyle.
Calgary is not Vancouver, Toronto or Montreal all of which have major post-secondary schools in their City Centre and 15,000+ hotel rooms, while Calgary has one college that is for day students (no residences) and about 5,000 hotel rooms. It is students and tourist who are mostly responsible for the evening and weekend downtown vitality in North American cities.
In reality, most downtowns only have a few vibrant pedestrian streets, each with just a few blocks that are animated. In reality, only Stephen Avenue Walk will ever be a vibrant street in the downtown core as it has the infrastructure of smaller shops and restaurants needed to create a good pedestrian oriented street. It could perhaps be extended a few blocks to the west include the Globe Cinema, and the shops and restaurants on that block.
Back in the ‘80s, Barclay Mall (aka 3rd Street SW) was designed as a pedestrian street with enhanced sidewalks, a traffic calming roadway, pedestrian furniture, enhanced lighting, planter boxes and public art. In many ways it is a “woonerf” street (Dutch term for a street that embraces pedestrians, cyclists and cars) that many urbanists champion these days as a means of urban revitalization. Barclay Mall was planned as a pedestrian friendly link between downtown’s Shopping/Financial district to Prince’s Island and the Bow River Promenade, but it will never have the street life urbanist and urban planners lust after because it is fragmented by back lane entrances to office tower loading docks that cut each block in half.
In reality, the lack of vitality on Stephen Avenue Walk (or other downtown streets, parks and plazas) in the evening and weekends isn’t because everyone is using the +15 walkway, it is because downtown residents would much rather walk along the Bow River Promenade, or head to 17th Avenue or 4th Street in Mission or 10th Street and Kensington Road to shop, dine and meet for drinks. Stephen Avenue and the downtown core lack the human scale (buildings that don’t dwarf people) required to create an attractive pedestrian district.
Lesson learned:
The +15 isn’t sucking the life out of the streets and public spaces of downtown.
With some collaboration and creativity the +15 system could not only make downtown more attractive as a place to work and live, but also a tourist attraction like New York City’s High Line.
Last Word
My observation while working downtown, was that downtown workers love to get outside when the weather allows it and use the +15 system to get there. And while it will be nice to get more people living in the downtown core in the future, it will still be the downtown workers (140,000 today and 160,000+ in the future), who will be responsible for the return of our downtown as the vibrant heart of our city.
It would be a big mistake to under estimate the value our +15 walkway plays in making downtown an attractive place to work for the new start-up and tech sector companies Calgary is desperately trying to attract and grow. The +15 walkway could play a major role in making our downtown core an attractive place to live in the future.
Yes we can improve out downtown’s street life, but let’s make sure we integrate it with the +15 walkway as there is a synergy between them most urbanists and planners don’t understand. Does it really matter if the downtown vibrancy is on the street or in the +15s, as long as there are lots of people downtown.
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