In a few years, the Beltline is about to be home to a lot more people, as preparations begin to build the city’s tallest residential tower community.

The Broadway on 17th three-tower development will, when complete, dominate a very unusual property along 17 Avenue SW.

Located on the corner of 17 Avenue and 4 Street SW, Vesta Properties will take advantage of the highly unusual 2.1 acres of space available for tower construction.

What that expansive room to build has made available for development has resulted in a plan for a trio of towers—the largest at 47 storeys—with more than 1,000 new homes, 70,000 sq. ft. of commercial space, and a major open plaza for the public.

“Most tower sites in major cities in Canada, or in the United States for that matter, are a half acre at best. It’s over a million square feet of buildable, which is pretty big, and I believe it’s the largest residential project in downtown Calgary. The city told us that, so I’m assuming that’s true, and from our research, it is definitely true,” said Kent Sillars, President of Vesta Properties.

Sillars said the project genesis was the current state of 17 Avenue being ready and right for redevelopment. Projects in the Culture and Entertainment District, completion of Calgary Transit upgrades to the LRT line, and easy access to the downtown made it an attractive development purchase for Vesta Properties.

While other buildings like the Telus Sky, which has residential apartments from floors 30 through 58, are taller—Broadway on 17th will take the crown as the tallest pure residential building in Calgary.

“After talking to the city about, ‘what do you think?’ They were very perceptive to the idea of the tallest [residential] tower in Calgary. There’s office buildings that are taller, but this is 47 storeys, so it is the tallest [residential] tower. So kind of iconic, and they thought that was neat,” Sillars said.

“We bought it because it was a great location, fourth and 17th… it’s kind of Grand Central Station for Calgary’s downtown area, and it’s got the best of both worlds because they don’t have to live right downtown.”

The land use change for the site was approved unanimously by Calgary City Council on Feb. 4, which at the time had councillors praising the project.

At the time, Ward 8 Councillor Courtney Walcott, who represents the area, said that there were 25,000 people living in the Beltline and that was, in his opinion, not enough.

“I think the reality is that there’s so much opportunity throughout the Beltline, especially on this edge of 17th, getting that close to the train is exactly where I want people to be,” he said.

“Fourth Street has historically been used as like the end of the Main Street area, because it’s everything between fourth, eighth, eighth and 14th that the energy focuses on. So there’s this massive gap between Fourth Street and Macleod.”

Helping to redevelop the 17 Avenue gap between 4 Street and Macleod Trail

Walcott said that addressing that gap was something that everyone he had talked to was excited about.

“The Beltline Community Association, the Beltline Neighborhood Association, spent years working with the city to open up a park on that east side of 17th for that reason. It’s to bring more people, more amenities into that space. This is an opportunity to bring both, which is an on-site amenity, massive plaza space, and a lot of people to an area that, in all honesty, still needs it,” Walcott said.

Sillars said that gap zone redevelopment was already underway but would also be spurred on further by the development of Broadway on 17th.

He said that those projects would not be as large as the one that Vesta Properties was undertaking, due to the smaller parcel sizes, but that over the next 10 to 15 years there would be similar projects to a 32-storey residential tower being constructed north of their project on 4 Street.

Sillars said the design of the complex would also complement future development in the area.

The tallest tower would be located to the north of the property closest to downtown, while the other two residential towers would be shorter in height on the southern edge.

“The concern of the city was they wanted to have the transition go to the south. The city plan for that area is starting to step the density down as we have 35 storeys… it will interface with future buildings that you will see not quite as tall as our north tower,” Sillars said.

“When you do multiple towers, you want to have one that stands out. You don’t want them all at the same height. You could and there’s been, but typically you don’t. You want to have a bit of variety. It just helps with the sight lines.”

He said that the original plan to build the north tower to 55 storeys was scaled back to 47, as a result of wanting to better integrate the building into the community.

The massing, or the way that the buildings are located and scaled, was designed by O2 to be pedestrian scaled for visitors. Tower stepping will provide a transition between the residential and commercial floors.

The plaza itself has also been designed to accommodate the hours in the afternoon it is most likely to be used, providing visitors sunlight into the area between 2 and 7 p.m., with large amounts of sunlight into the late afternoon and evening between 4 and 7 p.m.

The plaza will also create a pedestrian corridor where none currently exists, as there is no road between 15 Avenue and 17 Avenue SW where 3 Street would otherwise be on similar sized blocks.

As for when residents can expect to start to look at renting one of the 300 apartments, or purchasing one of the 700+ condos, Sillars said there wasn’t yet a definitive timeline of when that would occur. There will be a soft launch for interested parties closer to the Stampede in the summer, he said.