East Village plan gets nod, social agencies concerned

City council has approved in principle a plan to revitalize the East Village, but social agencies are concerned the new residents won't work well with those who live there now.

Representatives from the Salvation Army and the Drop-In Centre told aldermen that the poor, the homeless and the addicted who call the area home won't mix with the mainstream.

"What I see in the plan is there's a very deliberate effort to exclude and put limits on us," Dermot Baldwin, of the Drop-In Centre, said.

The East Village plan would see the land on 12 square blocks between City Hall and Fort Calgary, the railway tracks and the Bow River, housing 10,000 people. There would be a mix of housing, for people of varied incomes, and it would be pedestrian friendly with a "small-town" atmosphere.

Right now, 90 per cent of people living in the troubled area, which has a reputation for drug use and violence, are in shelters or subsidized housing.

Baldwin says the redevelopment of the area could push their clients out, and he'd like to see a buffer zone put in place.

Salvation Army spokesman Maj. Bob Ratcliff said their Centre of Hope clients would be unlikely to stay if the area changes as radically as council hopes.

"We are concerned that we would not be able to meet the needs of our people if they are displaced to another location.

Social agencies moved into the area about 10 years ago, acting on the philosophy that services should be provided where the people needing them are living.

Ald. Joe Ceci says the social agencies are taking a pessimistic and short-sighted view.

"To see that area develop, you have to squint. It's not developed now. There's only 2,000 people in the area and this incredibly beautiful plan looks to high-rise development, institutional development, all sorts of things that aren't there that will make it different in the future," Ceci said.

The city's last attempt to redevelop the East Village caused huge headaches.

A partnership with the private sector in a $1.5-billion deal to build housing and retail space, which would have included canals and gondolas, ended in the fall of 2002 when the city dropped out.

The city said it wasn't getting the best deal for taxpayers from the developers. An investigation determined that by acting as land owner, developer and regulator, the city had a conflict of interest.

It cost the city $2.8 million to extract itself from the deal.

The plan approved in principal Monday would take at least two years from final approval before construction could begin, mostly because the level of the land that is part of the Bow River's floodplain needs to be raised.