Cyclists are out cruising and pub-hopping on Kensington Road.
Category: Streets (Page 2 of 9)
A welcome sight to Hillhurst-Sunnyside: dogs, skateboards, guitars, and short sleeves. An indication that Spring is just around the corner.
“Put it this way: you buy an eighteen hundred square foot house in this neighbourhood for around eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars. You tear it down and rebuild it to a three thousand or thirty-five hundred square foot house at a cost of about six hundred thousand. You take it to the maximum elevation, or the designer makes this big, square looking thing, and by the time you get to landscaping, you’re in it for a million and a half dollars.
It doesn’t make sense to me. These houses have been here for a hundred years. Generations of kids grew up in them and moved on. I think it’s way more affordable to gut them down to the frames and studs, redesign and open up the rooms, maybe put an addition on the back part to extend the kitchen…. after you’re all done and said, you can have a really efficient house for the utilities. With a couple of solar panels in these old little homes, you can live off the power grid. Imagine! You can pull the permits yourself, get a couple of really good electrical and plumbing crews, and you wouldn’t have to spend more than say, forty to fifty thousand.
And imagine this, it’s a lot easier on your neighbours if you have a house that fits with the look and feel of the community instead of one that blocks out their sun once the house hits these crazy high elevations.”
Well, it happened.
One of the houses featured in day 84 of Sunnyside365 has caught on fire. The Calgary Fire Department hasn’t stated the cause, but my guesses are the squatters who were living in the house caused it. It’s unfortunate to see that this is how the developers who buy up property treat our community.
Kudos to the Calgary Emergency crews who responded to this call, they prevented something careless as this from becoming something really terrible. Those houses are all wooden framed and abandoned. It could have been so much worse.
Haha! Here’s a thing: It’s a leap-year. That means Sunnyside365 is actually Sunnyside366. On my extra day, I get to shoot whatever I want.
I can never get tired of looking at this city. Any time of day, any day of the year–it’s beautiful, along with all the people who live in it and make it what it is: home.
“You want an idea as to how fast things change? Think about this: what if I told you that everybody in the city has their names, addresses and telephone numbers all compiled into a book and then distributed to every house, business and telephone booth in the Calgary. Yeah, we used to call it the white pages and people didn’t blink twice about having their personal information out in the open like that–in fact, it was considered convenient to be able to be looked up in that fashion.
If you tried to do the same thing now, it would be a hassle. Think about that. Times have changed so fast, society and communities have changed so fast, that the old ways seem completely alien to us. I wonder if we’ll be like that twenty years from now. We can’t freeze Kensington in time. We’ll all get left behind.” The telephone booth on the corner of Kensington Road and 10th Street NW stands in disrepair, a bygone relic of an era long passed.
“I don’t see why this is such a contentious thing. The businesses in this neighbourhood need business. They need people. It’s a C-Train corridor, there’s two colleges up the hill, and the University a few more stops away. This community is right in the middle of everything. Either we can build new condos to replace some of the decrepit, hold houses, or we can keep letting those tiny little places get run-down and replaced with in-fill mansions.
You know, it’s not like the City has been just sneaking these developments through. They’re obligated to inform and engage the public for any issues that might come. You know how many people come to these hearings? Practically none.
I think what frustrates people is the speed at which Kensington (and Hillhurst-Sunnyside) is changing, as well as the astronomical cost of buying into one of these new developments. You know what I think? More affordable housing and rental units. That’s what this community needs.
Don’t tell anybody my name please, haha!”
I don’t typically like to feature photos of dogs so close together in #Sunnyside365, but I’m making an exception in this case. He’s just too cute.
Cars turn into ghosts as the drive through the misty Winter mornings of Memorial Drive.