Over 100,000 vehicles travel Calgary’s western thoroughfare every day. Crowchild Trail drivers know full-well just how jammed up traffic along the busy route can get.
The city has a plan to help ease that congestion, but it’s not sitting well with everyone.
More than 30 properties could be demolished to make way for the road improvements and residents are starting to learn more about exactly what could be lost.
READ MORE: City of Calgary releases design concepts for Crowchild Trail redevelopment
Ken and Chanel Lowe’s home next to Crowchild Trail is a masterpiece on the inside.
Over the past 13 years, Lowe and his wife have renovated every inch of the former industrial building with their own hands.
They feel that labour – and all their custom touches – are impossible to value.
The couple said, a few weeks ago, they found out from the city they could lose it all.
“We built our house with the intent of never really having to move,” Ken Lowe said.
“We understand the city has to grow – but it’s sad.”
In the meantime, a ramp to a new overpass at 24 Avenue could be built within a metre-and-a-half the 53-year-old St. Pius X Parish, a Roman Catholic church.
The church would lose its parish hall and about half its parking space.
St. Pius X shares its building and a close relationship with the University of Calgary Catholic Community.
Expropriation could force the church into a difficult situation, but so could staying put.
“Life beside highways is very difficult for churches that are supposed to be places of peace and tranquility and my fear is that the same thing will happen to St. Pius if we don’t find an alternative for how things will go,” pastoral council chair June Bergman said.
In short, the city is facing an issue of balancing the needs of many travellers against the lives of a few caught in the crosshairs of the Crowchild Trail redevelopment.
-With files from Mia Sosiak
Comments