Village Reborn

When he walks through East Village, Chris Ollenberger smiles, his eyes sparkle and with every step comes another story.

“See the way we made the road curve there? If we made it straight, we would have had to tear down the old King Eddy hotel.”

He takes a few steps down 4th Street and turns a corner. “Those trees over there? We set them in a row so people can walk three abreast without having to dodge around them.”

Ollenberger strolls toward Fort Calgary and points to an empty lot. “That property over there? Our archeologists found remnants of Aboriginal settlements over 3,000 years old.”

The facts roll off his tongue as he lists off his challenges and accomplishments in helping transform Calgary’s long suffering east end into a viable community. Ollenberger (CET 92) was President and CEO of the Calgary Municipal Land Corporation (CMLC) from 2007 to 2011. Former Mayor Dave Bronconnier hired him to breathe new life into East Village, something governments have unsuccessfully tried to do since the 1960s.

Ollenberger’s mission was to create an East Village that would be attractive to developers. To do so, he faced a myriad of challenges, including inadequate infrastructure, poor road access and a negative reputation. They would have to rebuild much of the community and the public’s perception of it, from the ground up.

The Problem with the East Village

Some Calgarians perceived the Drop-in Centre, the Salvation Army and their 2,000 residents who call East Village home as a huge obstacle in attracting developers. That’s just not the case, says Ollenberger. He and his team never considered relocating them. “Many world-class cities have homeless shelters next to five-star hotels and they coexist.”

The problems with East Village weren’t the creation of the residents; instead the people who lived there suffered from the way the area had evolved. The physical layout of East Village and its transportation routes had resulted in the area’s isolation and segregation. The area, and the people who lived there weren’t integrated into the greater community.

Ollenberger’s solution was to improve the road system and incorporate the area. This involved creating more two-way streets, re-opening Riverfront Avenue to cars and building an underpass at Fourth Street S.E. to eventually link East Village with Stampede Park.

Reclaiming the Land

But before they could even begin to redevelop East Village, they needed to eliminate a legacy of contamination in the neighbourhood. While it may have looked like empty lots and parking lots, the Village is one of the oldest parts of Calgary and its former commercial hub. Over the years it was home to gas stations, factories, two railways and even an asbestos plant. Ollenberger hired companies that uncovered dumps filled with car batteries, asbestos and all kinds of junk. “You wouldn’t believe what we found buried under there and removed.”

After the reclamation came the overhaul of the infrastructure. They upgraded all the utilities including new water and sewer pipes, power and phone lines. This meant working around century-old infrastructure, such as the main sanitary line for all of downtown Calgary which ran through East Village and needed to be rerouted. Plus Ollenberger also worked with the addition of a new Enmax utility, the District Energy plant, which will efficiently supply heat to the area while cutting back on greenhouse gases through underground pipes.

To top it all off, Ollenberger’s team had to raise the excavated land as much as seven feet because it was below the Bow River’s 100-year flood elevation. “There used to be seven steps up to the front door of the old Simmons building and no sidewalk. Now the front door is flush with the new sidewalk, seamlessly blending into the new community,” says Ollenberger.

“Before we did this infrastructure work,” Ollenberger says, “you couldn’t build a single family house in East Village, let alone a major development.”

Ollenberger says all the investment and hard work in East Village has already begun to pay off. CMLC has completed deals with two companies planning to build mixed-use developments that will include commercial, retail and residential space. Each project is worth about $300 million. On top of that, East Village will become the location of Calgary’s new National Music Centre incorporating the old King Edward Hotel. “Cantos has a great vision for that project. It’s a wonderful bonus for East Village,” he says.

A Jewel in Calgary

Ollenberger’s journey to East Village began with a false start as a young engineering student at the University of Calgary. He didn’t make it through his first year. His academic misstep taught him that SAIT’s Civil Engineering Technology program with its smaller classes and hands-on approach would be more suited to his learning style. Those credentials landed him work in the Fort McMurray oil patch. After that, he returned to school at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont. for an engineering degree. He then returned to his hometown to work for Calgary developers, and gained experience that ultimately led to a position as President and CEO of Three Sisters Mountain Village Ltd. in Canmore, Alta.

While in Canmore, Ollenberger heard the City of Calgary was looking for someone to head up the East Village project, and he threw his hat in the ring. He says it was incredible to be chosen to lead a community revitalization project with a budget of over $250M, involving hundreds of thousands of man-hours that would eventually resuscitate almost a third of downtown Calgary. And he adds the part of the project that makes him proudest is the new RiverWalk along the Bow River. Ollenberger led the conceptualization, detailed design and construction execution of the$22M park.

“I took pictures of examples from all over the world, good and bad, and spent weeks with our team and advisors developing the details of RiverWalk. I still have the original hand sketched plan that we all signed and agreed to build.”

Ollenberger’s efforts have opened up East Village to people who would otherwise have avoided the area. “You never used to see a soul jogging along the pathway that went through East Village. People who would go running would run up to Chinatown then turn around and run the other way,” he says.

Ollenberger says RiverWalk will be a jewel for Calgary. “I knew we succeeded when we saw mothers with strollers and children beside them walking up and down the RiverWalk in the middle of the day. It’s just an indication that East Village is becoming reborn as a vital and vibrant part of our city once again.”

Chris Ollenberger left the Calgary Municipal Land Corporation in early 2011 for family reasons. He has recently been appointed Executive Vice-President of OPUS Corporation, a Calgary mixed-use, commercial, office and industrial development company.