Perhaps the exposure of just how ideological Calgary’s city planning department has gotten is a good thing. It is an election year after all. What better time could there be for Calgarians to realize just what kind of damage is being wrought upon the city’s struggling business community by an uncompromising city administration obsessed with pursuing urban density at any cost?.This is cold comfort at best however for the Shim family. These small business owners are at risk of losing their life savings due to intransigent city planners who have refused to let them rebuild their business after it was destroyed in a 2019 fire..For those outside of Calgary, this is a story of a Dairy Queen restaurant that operated profitably on Center Street and 18th Avenue, north of the city center for 50 years. The family-run restaurant was an active and valued part of the community. In 2013, the Shim family took over the franchise outlet. The Shims were recent immigrants from Korea and they put everything they had into the business. Then tragedy struck in 2019 when an electrical fire destroyed the building..The path to recovery appeared to be straightforward enough. The business was insured and they could simply rebuild while taking into account some upgrades due to different franchise requirements and traffic issues. The drive-thru entrance would have to come from 18th Ave. rather than Center Street, and the layout of the building had slight changes. Otherwise, the plan was to replace the original freestanding business. This triggered the need for a development permit which would typically be an open-and-shut process..But with the encouragement of Ward 7 Councilor Druh Farrell, the city planning department refused the permit to rebuild. It is a catastrophe for the Shim family..The City of Calgary, under the guidance of Naheed Nenshi and with the support of councillors like Druh Farrell, has some big-planning dreams. They envision something of a hipster’s paradise where everybody lives in multi-level, high-density condos and everyone bikes to work. They feel that the entire city can be turned into a walkable paradise if only the city could pressure citizens and businesses hard enough into conforming with their vision. Unfortunately for these city planning dreamers, investors and citizens stubbornly refuse to take part in this grand scheme. To force compliance, the city planning department uses a hammer..The City of Calgary wants the owners of the Dairy Queen lot to develop the space into a multi-level building with no parking, residential spaces above, and commercial spaces below. They kindly have said that a walk-in Dairy Queen outlet could occupy one of those ground-level spaces. It has become clear that the City intends to refuse a development permit for anything less than their plan, which does not resemble that they had before the 2019 fire.. The problem is that the owner of the property has neither the will nor the money to construct such a building. In the meantime, the business operators remain unemployed and are facing personal insolvency..If this standoff continues, the Shim family will likely have to resign themselves to going broke and find a new way to make a living in their later years of life. The property owner will have to try and find a buyer for this lot devalued due to the restrictions placed upon it..With so much empty commercial and residential space throughout the city, why on earth would an investor pump the funds into building a multilevel, mixed-use complex on that location? If anyone is willing to develop it, they will likely only do so if they obtain it for a devalued, artificially low price..Most likely, the lot will sit empty and undeveloped for years while a hardworking family finds itself pushed out of business over what is essentially a point of principle on the part of the city..Could you imagine if your home burned down and you were told by the city that you had to replace it with an apartment building? Keep in mind, your insurance is only covering the replacement of the original home. You may have neither the money to do so, nor the desire to replace your house with a an apartment block..Would Calgary’s inner city have been able to rebuild after the 2013 floods if the damaged businesses and homes had to completely redesign themselves in order to fit in with some urban density dream?.This story highlights the truly ignorant and anti-business attitude that some on city council hold..“We are sympathetic to the owner and the franchisee, but this situation actually represents an opportunity for them to build something so much better on the site than what is proposed,” wrote Farrell as she recommended that the city planning department refuse the development permit, “Such a project could even include a new Dairy Queen, but of course without a drive-thru. This is a tremendous opportunity for the owner to extract significantly more financial value out of the site than with what is proposed.”.Farrell thinks she knows what’s best for the Shim family, informed no doubt by her years of successful private sector business experience..Imagine if Peter’s Drive-In burned down and wanted to rebuild. It is in the same area, thus the lot would fall under the same planning vision as the Shim’s Dairy Queen had. Would Farrell oppose the reconstruction and tell the owners about what a great opportunity they would have in building an apartment building with a small fast food joint with no parking or drive-thru on the ground floor? Would that model work with Peter’s? Would it remain profitable? Of course not. Nor would the Dairy Queen in such circumstances..Calgary is in the midst of an economic crisis. Between the pandemic restrictions, low energy prices and a decade of anti-business policies from city hall, the outlook for enterprise in Calgary is bleak. We will be lucky if half of the restaurants that were in the city a year ago are still in operation a year from now. One can’t drive more than a few blocks without seeing a boarded-up restaurant and almost every commercial building in the city has a for lease sign gracing it right now. It is unimaginable that the city would hinder a successful business from rebuilding right now..City density has become an obsession for the city administration in the last decade. It has fostered a tunnel-vision among regulators and planners, and it leads to situations like this. Calgarians have an opportunity this fall to change the narrative as a municipal election approaches. Voters need to come out and they need to flush out the establishment..The only silver lining from this travesty with the Shim family is that it may finally wake up Calgarians up to what their council has been doing behind their backs..Cory Morgan is the Alberta Political Columnist for the Western Standard and the Host of the Cory Morgan Show
