The development aims to foster continued growth and evolution in the area. By combining various uses and incorporating civic architecture, it seeks to revitalize the current neighborhood into a vibrant community destination and hub within Calgary.
Project Details
METAFOR was engaged to investigate the potential capacity for the existing building, also known commonly as the Old Central Library to become a leading adaptive re-use project within the city.
The development was interpreted to be a catalyst for continued growth and development in the area. It uses a combination of varied uses and civic architecture to revitalize the building into a community destination and hub within Calgary. Through the course of the work, METAFOR developed an approach for addressing adaptive reuse in buildings for a short, medium, and long-term vision. This involved code analysis and land use analysis to see what the existing building classification and zoning allowed with minimal intervention.
Sector(s)
Mixed Use
Year Completed
2021
Location
Calgary, AB
Client
Confidential
Role
Feasibility Study & Needs Assessment
Size
± 81,676 ft²
Value
± $18 Million
What emerged was a set of criteria that a landlord could use to maintain base building safety and security, while allowing a lease of all, or portions of the building with minimal requirements.
Secondly, if the leasable criteria generated in the first study were to govern the building's operation for its foreseeable lifetime, then what would a landlord need to do to extend that lifetime and associated revenue to the greatest extent possible. Finally METAFOR looked at the building's potential as a full renovation since there would be numerous directions a full renovation and land use change could do to a building's program. These were broken into components that could be mixed and matched depending on what the market demand was at the time the renovations were being considered.
