Calgary’s Olympic Plaza bricks are now ready for pick-up

Thousands of Calgarians can pick up their legacy bricks from the ’88 Olympics over the next two days starting Friday.

Some might even call it a Christmas miracle as the city prepared their stations on Thursday for the many people looking to snag their name-engraved bricks.

Each station inside the Agriculture Building in Stampede Park is lined with tarps and signs alphabetically identifying their area to help make the pickup process seamless.

The city says this is an invite-only event for those who received an email confirmation and that only registered salvaged bricks will be there.

This follows efforts to convince the city to return the bricks to Calgarians after it said it wouldn’t be able to when it announced the Arts Commons and Olympic Plaza transformation.

Some people even removed their bricks themselves.

Over 30,000 bricks were engraved by those who paid $19.88, as a way to memorialize the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary over 37 years ago.

After announcing it would try to give people their bricks on the 11th hour, with no guarantees of their survival, the city said about 70 per cent of the 8,000 requested bricks, or 5,600, were removed and retrieved from Olympic Plaza.

Kyle Ripley, the City of Calgary director of parks and open spaces said the only way to save as many bricks as possible was to remove all 33,000 bricks in the plaza.

The city said removing one brick at a time was “impossible” because of the cost and time constraints, particularly as the Arts Commons Transformation project construction gets underway.

Ripley explains that the bricks were mortared on five of the six sides, so salvaging close to 6,000 was far from an easy task.

“Only the top of the brick that had the name inscribed on it was available,” Ripley told CityNews.

“It had horses and humans, and motorcycles and you name it … It’s been a spectacular place. And those bricks saw a lot of use and a lot of wear and tear.”

He says the Olympic Plaza bricks were never intended to be removed or returned, along with being installed as part of a durable and weather-resistant public walkway.

While there was a tight window for retrieval, Ripley says over 3,500 people will be leaving the Agriculture Building with their brick in tow.

A digital scan of the entire Olympic Plaza, including an Olympic brick finder, can be found online.

The bricks will be available for pick up from Jan. 3-4.

With files from Phoenix Phillips