What's in a downtown?

Only months after the pandemic shut down the planet, in May 2020, Alex Sarian moved from New York City to Calgary to take over as president and CEO of Arts Commons.

He didn’t know much about Calgary, but his idea of a cool neighbourhood was a lot like most people: one that was walkable, with restaurants, cafes, bars and other cultural attractions, access to nature, and daycare.

Calgary, he was delighted to discover, was packed with amazing vibrant, diverse communities that were downtown-adjacent without actually being downtown - which presented a challenge for a guy whose new job was overseeing a downtown performing arts centre.

If they already have everything they need within walking distance of their homes, he wondered, “What can get people to come downtown?”

It’s a question cities around the world are asking post-pandemic, as downtowns empty out and business tax revenues plummet, creating a global crisis that once - say, around 2019 - appeared to be strictly a Calgary thing.

For Sarian, the answer in a word, is events.

Whether it’s the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, the High Performance Rodeo or Choir! Choir! Choir!, Chinook Blast in winter or a Country Thunder in summer, downtown is a destination unlike any other - and just like your heart inside your body, no city can truly thrive without a healthy, beating, dynamic downtown.

Choir! Choir! Choir! at the Jack Singer Concert Hall. Photo by Kiani Evans.

And when it comes to downtown Calgary, Arts Commons is the biggest events host around, making Sarian the shepherd of an arts centre that’s also an events epicentre.

“Not only do we host the city’s top resident theatre companies - (Theatre Calgary, Alberta Theatre Projects, One Yellow Rabbit, Downstage, Fire Exit Theatre) - “and the (Calgary) Philharmonic, but we offer our own programming,” Sarian says, adding that Arts Commons produces 2,000 events a year, with over 200 community partners.

“Our goal,” he says, “is to expand that ecosystem for artists and organizations.”

LIVE EVENTS BOUNCE BACK
In late August, StatsCan released figured showing that performing arts, sports and other live events were back across the nation, showing revenue increases of 146 per cent in 2022, compared to 2021.

The non-profit performing arts industry saw revenues increase by 71 per cent, while for-profit grew by more than 56 per cent in 2022.

It was a bounce back, a sign that after spending two winters in front of their big and small screens, people were looking for a reason to go out - with the growing awareness that the cities that will thrive in coming years will be ones that have stuff going on.

Taylor Swift show, anyone?

ARTS COMMONS EXPANSION PLAN
Arts Commons has launched an ambitious expansion plan, a project Sarian says is the largest arts and culture infrastructure project in Canada.

That project, which is anticipated to tip $660M from initial design stages includes upgrading and improving existing Arts Commons venues, making the building itself less of a self-contained culture fortress and more of a community hub, as well as building a new space across Stephen Avenue in Olympic Plaza and a full redesign of Olympic Plaza as part of a complete arts campus experience on the central downtown block.

There’s also a $50 million sustainability fund that will be used to make Arts Commons venues more accessible to communities that might lack the resources or comfort level to present programming in the heart of the city.

While it already produces a lot of events, Sarian says Arts Commons had to turn down another 600 events in 2023 due to lack of available dates in the venue’s half-dozen performing arts spaces.

The expansion is an initiative designed to rejuvenate not just the performing arts centre, but also Stephen Avenue and the downtown core.

Start with 2,000 events a year that draw anywhere from 50 to 2,200 people, and watch the restaurants, bars, parking lots and other retail businesses in the core thrive, in no small part because companies with the freedom to relocate anywhere look to cities that offer memorable experiences.

THE FAN EXPERIENCE
Mount Royal marketing professor David Finch couldn’t agree more.

Finch consults for a variety of organizations including SportCalgary about what gets a city’s juices flowing and talking to him is kind of fun.

He’s a community builder who has diagnosed Calgary and what he says is kind of exactly what Sarian says he saw when he moved here.

“Calgary is a city full of world-class experiences that isn’t a world-class experience,” Finch says.

What’s a world-class experience anyways?

“The journey to any experience doesn’t start the minute they walk into the venue. It starts far earlier. It starts the minute they start thinking about going out,” he says. “How are the sidewalks shovelled? What’s the parking like?

Finch’s description for what Calgary suffers from is “islands” disconnected from each other, another way of saying lots of great neighbourhoods surrounding a downtown that isn’t quite anyone’s neighbourhood but in a way, is everyone’s neighbour you hope can find a way to straighten themselves out.

What if, he says, you go to a Flames game at the ‘Dome, and after the game, you and your friends want to check out the Blues Can on Ninth Avenue in Inglewood for some live music and a beer?

It isn’t far between the two venues - but getting there, he says, is “a pain in the ass.”

How does that play into a vision for how to reignite downtown Calgary?

He wants to see the city innovate thoughtful ways to bridge the islands that disconnect the city’s numerous world-class experiences from one another.

Party in the Plaza from Arts Commons Presents. Photo by Mike Tan.

EAST VILLAGE LESSONS
One part of downtown Calgary is ahead of the rest right now: East Village. Over the past decade and a half, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent trying to kick start that part of the city - and it’s working.

One recent August Sunday, around 10 p.m. I found myself walking down the Bow River pathway near Fort Calgary. There was a soundtrack playing - it was none other than Keith Urban, a Grammy Award-winning country music superstar performing at Country Thunder, a music festival that draws tens of thousands of visitors who fill city hotels, bars and restaurants for three days

Along the bike path, there were young people on scooters, people walking dogs and even families enjoying one of the final weekends of summer.

Calgary’s East Village Riverwalk.

It looked a lot like those marketing posters condo developers use that feature a vision of urban living, only it wasn’t a drawing - it was the real deal.

CMLC Communications and Strategic Partnerships VP Clare LePan is asked what lessons the city might take from the experience of rejuvenating East Village and apply them to Olympic Plaza and the Arts Commons rebuild?

“15 years in, I would say (one lesson we learned is) having a commitment to testing design approaches,” LePan says. For CMLC, the re-imagining of East Village started not with a new venue, or the relocation of a large organization, but rather with a big spend on infrastructure: pathways, park benches, street lights - that they hoped might be the start of something.

Another thing is temporary retail environments, rather than holding out for permanent partners.

East Village’s redevelopment might have started with bike paths along the river, but soon drew the National Music Centre, Platform Innovation Hub, numerous condominium developments, the new Central Library, and new hotels. Just south of East Village, in Calgary’s emerging Culture + Entertainment District, a huge new expansion of the BMO Centre is underway, with the building of a new Event Centre soon to come.

‘DOWNTOWN MATTERS’
For Arts Commons, that downtown experience Sarian is looking for might best be exemplified by Choir! Choir! Choir!, a show from Toronto that involves getting the audience at Jack Singer Hall to sing along to Abba’s Mamma Mia album.

It was a March, 2023 show that sort of also doubled as a civic celebration marking the end of the pandemic - and turned out to maybe be the start of an upswing in downtown’s fortunes.

“Wasn't that unbelievable?” Sarian said. “It wasn’t the most high-end event, but to come down, sing your heart out with two thousand people in the post-pandemic, it felt as if it was exactly what the city needed at that very moment.”

In the summer of 2022, when the performing arts companies are taking their summer break, there wasn’t a lot going on at Arts Commons - so Sarian teamed up with some promoters to bring 13 southeast Asian cultural events to Arts Commons over a three or four month period, which brought in thousands of folks who might not otherwise come downtown and in doing so, made Arts Commons the busiest performing arts space in North America during the summer of 2022.

The City of Calgary has been bringing more events downtown - Chinook Blast and Block Heater in the winter (and High Performance Rodeo and even motocross at Stampede Park).

Chinook Blast on Olympic Plaza as part of ArtXpeditions from Arts Commons Presents. Photo by Kiani Evans.

In August, there was a huge free Olympic Plaza concert featuring Kardinal Offishall and Keisza, a Red Bull motorsports weekend, and over at Fort Calgary, Country Thunder - in addition to Blues Fest, Folk Fest, the Stampede and numerous cultural festivals that kept downtown hopping throughout the summer months.

Finch says that ironically, the oil shock that collapsed the energy industry in 2014 and cleared out a lot of offices in downtown Calgary actually resulted in Calgary being ahead of other North American cities in creating initiatives to help rebound downtown.

“Calgary is a step ahead in reinventing downtown,” he says. “Building conversions. Demolition of buildings.”

He says the approach that Calgary city council is taking is being studied by other North American cities such as Washington D.C., which is now experiencing its own existential crisis - recently, the Washington Post published a long opinion piece about how Calgary is leading the way in how to think about downtown re-birth.

It has to, Finch says.

“With Calgary’s tax structure,” he says, “we’ve designed a city where downtown matters.”

And moving forward, the chances of downtown rebounding by having its office towers re-populate look like so much wishful thinking.

What will replace those office workers?

Sarian may have arrived during a pandemic that felt like a living zombie movie, but he also feels as if he’s overseeing Calgary’s downtown turning a corner, led by the re-imagining of Arts Commons and Olympic Plaza.

“It’s big, audacious, and bold - and I think it’s the right story, at the right time, in the right place,” Sarian says.

“Live events are what get us going anywhere.”