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Calgary's residential subdivisions are often indistinguishable from one another. Not so Garrison Woods, the most unusual such project in Canada, with what must be the most richly diverse housing mix, recycled military buildings, mature trees and commemorative streets.

It's also very much in the New Urbanist style of a self-contained village, and in the more recent "smart growth" mode, which discourages heavy traffic.

Take Toronto's Cabbagetown and Riverdale neighbourhoods (along with some of their retail space), add a trace of Rosedale and some elements of Markham's New Urbanist projects, put them on a decommissioned, 1935-era military base 10 minutes from downtown Calgary, and you get some idea of Garrison Woods.

Then there are the 400 ingeniously recreated cottages once occupied by military families, a private French school in a converted building, back-to-back hockey arenas, an $800,000 recreation centre and the Museum of the Regiments -- all sharing 455 acres of what was once Canadian Forces Base Calgary.

Toronto-based Canada Lands Co. (CLC), a Crown corporation that disposes of surplus federal property, is the owner and developer of the former military base. Garrison Woods is the first of three phases in the development. "When the whole project is completed, 9,000 to 10,000 people will live there," says Mark McCullough, CLC's general manager of real estate.

Garrison Woods features quite a housing mix. There are 1,600 units -- townhouses, single-family detached, three- and four-storey apartment buildings, refurbished single-family and semi-detached cottages formerly used by married soldiers, granny flats above garages in rear lanes, and a senior's residence.

Much of the housing is clad in vinyl siding and stucco, popular with Calgary home buyers, although a lot of brick has been introduced.

Sizes and prices are all over the map.

Sizes run from 650 to 2,500 square feet, on properties 16 feet wide for townhouses and 48 feet for single-family dwellings, costing between $120,000 and $700,000. (Lot prices paid by builders have, in fact, as much as doubled over the past five years.)

Following design guidelines set by CLC, builders have constructed Craftsman (Prairie farm house), Tudor, Colonial and Victorian-style houses -- but nothing else -- across the 175-acre site and among the redeveloped military houses. The project began in May, 1998; the second phase, called Garrison Green, will include 800 to 900 building lots. A third and final 200-acre phase will accommodate 2,000 housing units. Mr. McCullough says.

The names of First World War battles are used for the streets and five parks in Garrison Woods. For the second phase, street names and its three parks will honour Canada's United Nations peacekeepers, and the country's participation in the Second World War and Korean War will also be commemorated in later phases.

Majestic trees 40 to 70 years old line the winding streets and boulevards of Garrison Woods, making the new houses look a bit like old ones that have been there a long time and just been spruced up, which is an enormous marketing advantage. Homeowners won't have to wait half a lifetime for the trees on their streets to grow up.

That time-warp feeling is accentuated by a block of small shops and an interior courtyard with two levels of 157 condominium suites on top -- reminiscent of some old downtown Toronto neighbourhoods. (As it happens, Royop Corp., the developer of this retail/apartment gateway to Garrison Woods -- in partnership with Resiance Corp. of Calgary -- is a subsidiary of Toronto-based H&R Real Estate Development Trust, which is busily building high-rise condominiums in the Greater Toronto Area.)

It was the last piece of development in the first phase. The infrastructure for Garrison Green, to be marketed next summer, is being prepared on an adjacent 80-acre site. It will have the same density -- about 10 housing units to a developable acre, compared to the three units an acre in the usual greenfield subdivisions.

How was the higher density achieved? About 40 per cent of its units are in three- and four-storey apartments, including a 134-unit seniors' apartment building, Mr. McCullough explains. That leaves 20 per cent for townhouses, a mere 15 per cent in single-family detached homes and 25 per cent refurbished single and semi-detached houses.

None of the surviving buildings are architectural treasures, although they did convert nicely -- some of them for temporary uses. The former barracks around the parade square have been turned into small-business premises, the officers' mess works well as the marketing centre, and the commanding officer's house is now CLC's office for the project. Mr. McCullough figures all three phases will be completed in eight years.

Mr. McCullough summarizes Garrison Woods this way: "It is a New Urbanist, neo-traditional community, with houses closer to the street, lanes and garages at the rear, porches out front and tree-lined sidewalks and boulevards, with a variety of uses, parks and recreational facilities.

"We've also narrowed some of the streets and introduced traffic-calming measures . . . and emphasize the pedestrian nature of the community. The street lighting is low profile, instead of standard overhead lights. Crosswalks with raised, pressed concrete also act as speed bumps," he says.

In trying to connect all of the neighbourhoods, CLC is preserving as much of the old street pattern as possible, and leaving most of the trees in place, although they have had to relocate some and remove a few that are diseased or too much in the way. Mr. McCullough says digging under and around the trees' root systems to install sewers and water mains is complicated and costs nearly a third more than it would if the trees were removed and the site left bare.

It was tricky work, but no less tricky than persuading Calgary's city council that Garrison Woods would be good for the city. Mr. McCullough says council originally had a mild antipathy to a federal government initiative, even by an arm's length Crown corporation, when it started the public consultation and planning process in 1996. The Department of National Defence had closed the base in 1995.

CLC "demonstrated that we embraced a very open public-planning process, giving major stakeholders an opportunity to contribute to the design process, and after a 17-month-long process, council approved Garrison Woods. We started construction within a few hours, in May 1998, and have since delivered on the vision, which has brought us a lot of good will," he says.

While Calgary's planning department and council are supportive, he says technical staff who approve subdivision plans are still giving them "a rough ride," he says, adding: "Nor is it getting better."

At that level of the city's bureaucracy, he explains, conventional suburban development is favoured because it has always been done that way.

"They are used to standards, and we emphasize customization, and working around trees and existing houses," he says. "There is a fundamental disconnect between policy established by council, and delivery and implementation. We're not meshing at this time, but we're hoping to structure a new type of planning document and approach to zoning that will help bridge that gap."

It will help that Calgarians are generally impressed with the change so far. Richard Pauls, Calgary's director for competitive intelligence and economic development, says "the redevelopment of abandoned military facilities is always a challenge for a community, when it leaves a big chunk of real estate and the loss of hundreds of jobs," he says. Garrison Woods, however, "has been very positive for Calgary, creating jobs, new businesses, affordable and high-end housing, all of which pay taxes, offsetting the losses arising from people moving off the base."

Robert Young, vice-president and general manager of the real estate broker Colliers International in Calgary, says Garrison Woods has "expanded the tax base, replaced old barracks-style housing and made the area a lot more appealing. We rarely have the opportunity to create a people-friendly new community within an established area, which allows people to live downtown with a consistent architectural theme and near their workplaces."

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