Livingston dubbed future ‘downtown of the north’ in Calgary

Brookfield Residential Alberta hopes Livingston will follow in the footprints of neighbourhoods like McKenzie Towne and Tuscany as Calgary’s next master-planned community.

The company launched its plans for the northern community earlier this week, outlining what it will hopefully look like in the early 2030s.

Chief Operating Officer Trent Edwards said the goal for the community stretching across Centre St. just north of Stoney Tr. is 7,000 full-time jobs and 30,000 residents.

“To me it’s going to be the new benchmark of how master-planning communities need to be planned out and how they need to be built,” he said.

The timeline is for residences to be built over the next 10 years and then in the subsequent five, office and retails space, restaurants, other amenities and hopefully a hospital.

“With where the demographic of the city is going, from a baby-boomer, millennial and then the migrants that we’ve had come into the city and really creating a mix for what we have, I think we’re going to be able to hit all those points,” he said.

By the end of this year and going into next, builders will have showhomes in place and sales will begin in the first quarter of 2017.

One of the major pluses will be the connection of the Green Line LRT, as residents will be to travel into the downtown and beyond all the way to Seton.

Despite the economic downturn, Edwards said we have to look long-term.

“We launched McKenzie Towne in 1995, which you recall was not a great economic time, this is similar, but we’ve got great faith in Calgary,” he said. “Hopefully I’ll be able to still be working and see this thing all the way through.”