Living at Bella Lusso, Calgary

The Atlas

The courtyard is the first thing you learn here. Two passageways cut through from Centre Avenue and both of them open onto planting instead of onto a corridor, so the walk from the sidewalk to your own door happens outdoors in every season. A block north, 1 Avenue is doing its business. You hear it from the courtyard without being in it.

Grounds

Bella Lusso sits at 1000 and 1010 Centre Avenue NE, in Bridgeland, where one name covers two four-storey buildings held around a shared court. Centre Avenue runs east and west through the middle of the community, a residential street one block south of the commercial one, which is the arrangement that lets a building here be close to the shops without being on top of them.

Bridgeland is bounded by the Bow River and Memorial Drive to the south, Edmonton Trail to the west and the escarpment to the north, with Tom Campbell's Hill holding the eastern high ground. Bella Lusso sits inside that square nearer its eastern half. The ground under the community was two villages, Riverside by the Langevin Bridge on the trail north and Bridgeland beside it, and the grid they left still runs the block this building occupies.

Homes

Four storeys, 74 homes, and the City permitted the project as an apartment and a townhouse building together, which is the reason a run of these homes meets the ground directly rather than through a lobby and a corridor. Bucci Developments built it. The development permit was issued in May 2005 and Bucci dates the finished project to 2006.

Coupland Kraemer Architects carried it through the development permit and 4C Architecture through the building permit. A good number of the homes carry balconies, and the elevation is a European register of pitched forms and heavy trim that reads older than its permit date. Bucci has kept building in this community since, with Radius at 88 9 Street NE, seven storeys of concrete finished in 2019, and Xenex in the Beltline before that. Four storeys around a court is the earlier answer to the same block, and it is a different one.

Everyday

First Avenue NE is a block north and it carries the daily list. Bridgeland Market at 1104 stocks grocery, deli, bakery, coffee and flowers under one roof and opens at seven on weekdays. Sushi Bar Zipang has been at 1010 1 Avenue NE for more than eighteen years by its own account and closes Sundays. Made by Marcus scoops across the street at 1105 until eleven at night.

Bridgeland and Memorial station sits at the bottom of the hill in the median of Memorial Drive NE. It opened on April 27 1985 as one of seven stations on the original northeast line, and it is 1.4 kilometres from the City Hall interlocking, which is the structural reason a household here can run one car and stop discussing it. Tom Campbell's Hill is up and east. West along Centre Avenue the ground opens where the Calgary General Hospital stood until it came down in 1998, and a wall built from brick salvaged out of it stands on that ground.

Amenities

Parking is underground and heated, with visitor stalls and a car wash bay down there. Each home carries a private storage locker. Bicycle storage has a room of its own and an elevator serves the floors. The courtyard is landscaped and it is the shared amenity the plan is organised around.

We have found no published fitness room and no concierge here, and we are naming that instead of implying one. A four-storey building of 74 homes carries the running costs of 74 homes, and the amenity list reads accordingly. What the plan buys with the money it does not spend on a gym is the court, which is larger than a building this size usually gives away.

Edges

Memorial Drive and the Bow close the south, so the community keeps a river and a pathway network below it. Edmonton Trail draws the west and takes the through traffic with it. The escarpment rises north. East is Tom Campbell's Hill, which is the rare boundary you can climb, and the reward at the top is the skyline the community spends its evenings looking at.

Every edge here is water, a road carrying somebody else's cars, or a park. That is the reason Bridgeland holds its own pace, and we took the whole community apart in Living in Bridgeland.

The Bella Lusso Edit

Where to start. Hours move, so check before you go.

Tom Campbell's Hill Natural Park
Eighteen hectares of remnant fescue grassland above the community, named for a sign that once advertised Tom Campbell's Hats.

Bridgeland Market
1104 1 Avenue NE. Grocery, deli, bakery, coffee and flowers, open from seven on a weekday.

Sushi Bar Zipang
1010 1 Avenue NE, on the block behind you. Lunch and dinner, closed Sundays.

Made by Marcus
1105 1 Avenue NE. Ice cream until eleven, which is later than the rest of the street.

We keep the building page current as listings move. Start with Bella Lusso condos for sale.