Spruce Cliff Downs Redevelopment

Calgary Heritage Housing is in the process of creating a concept plan for the future redevelopment of Spruce Cliff Downs at 3400 Spruce Drive SW. The existing property, which the Province owns and Calgary Heritage Housing manages, is in need of a complete overhaul. The intent is to introduce all new seniors housing on the site through a comprehensive redevelopment.

The project is still in its very early stages. A land use amendment will ultimately be required to facilitate the redevelopment. Funding also remains to be secured. As a result, demolition of the existing townhouses, and construction of the new seniors housing complex is still a few years out.

Next steps

You can view the presentation boards from the Feb. 13, 2020 Open House here:

The project team is now busy writing a report for delivery to the Alberta Government in early March. This report summarizes all pre-planning activities performed to date, along with the project team’s findings during the collaborative workshops and open houses which included the tenants and the surrounding community, the proposed high-level Concept Plan and the rationale with a proposed strategy for moving forward.

This report is meant to demonstrate the inherent benefits of redeveloping this property to Alberta seniors, the Community of Spruce Cliff and to the asset owner (the Government of Alberta). The goal is to secure requisite funding to proceed with this fantastic redevelopment.

Project team

Calgary Heritage Housing has contracted Colliers Project Leaders to provide project management expertise for this large-scale endeavor. We have also engaged Ground Cubed Planning for our community engagement initiatives, along with MTA, a local urban architecture and design firm, to help us envision the future redevelopment.

Community engagement to date

We kicked off this project with tenant engagement to help inform the creation of the Concept Plan.

On the evening of Monday, October 28, 2019, we organized a Tenant Workshop where all existing Spruce Cliff Downs tenants were invited to share their opinions and preferences regarding their living accommodations and lifestyle options, as well as to ask questions or raise any concerns about the redevelopment plans.

The workshop was well attended with 68% of the existing Spruce Cliff Downs tenants coming out and participating, confirming our belief that they’d have valuable insights and ideas to contribute straight out of the gate.

On Monday, November 25, 2019, Calgary Heritage Housing hosted our first Open House for the Spruce Cliff Downs redevelopment initiative.

Various major stakeholders in the Spruce Cliff community were invited to come out and learn more about the project and share development ideas and preferences at the event.

The event was well attended and input well received.

On Thursday, February 13, 2020, we hosted a public Open House where we introduced high-level conceptual massing images showing what the new development might look like based on the site’s specifications, development goals and feedback received to date.

In addition to existing Spruce Cliff Downs tenants and their community neighbours, we were pleased to have MLA Nicholas Milliken and his assistant Julie Ann stop in to learn more about the project and show support.