Living at Bridgeland Hill, Calgary

The Atlas

Edmonton Trail climbs here, and the building sits on the climb. Walk out the door and turn south and you are down at Memorial Drive and the river inside a few minutes. Turn north and the road keeps rising toward Renfrew. The address is the old route out of town, and the grade is the reason you always know which way you are facing.

Grounds

Bridgeland Hill sits at 510 Edmonton Trail NE, on the western edge of Bridgeland where Edmonton Trail runs up from Memorial Drive. Edmonton Trail is the community's western boundary and it carries the through traffic, so a building on this side of Bridgeland gets the arterial on one face and the residential grid on the other three.

The name of the road is a record. Edmonton Trail is the overland route north out of Calgary, and Riverside grew beside the Langevin Bridge on that trail and incorporated in 1903. Bridgeland grew beside Riverside, the two were absorbed into one community, and the old grid is what a four-storey building on Edmonton Trail now sits inside. Nothing about the address is decorative. It says where the road went.

Homes

Four storeys of wood frame over a concrete parkade, roughly 93,000 square feet, carrying 107 suites. Rositch Hemphill Architects drew it and Ventana Construction built it for GableCraft Homes. The City issued the building permit in November 2014, Ventana dates the finished building to 2016, and GableCraft ran a temporary sales centre on the site through that year.

Wood frame over concrete is the structural decision under the whole building. It caps the building at four storeys, which is why Bridgeland Hill reads at the height of the houses behind it instead of over them, and it is the reason the homes come in at floor plates a concrete tower does not build. The plan holds a landscaped courtyard, so the interior faces look at planting and the outer ones look at the trail.

Everyday

Bridgeland and Memorial station opened on April 27 1985 in the median of Memorial Drive NE, one of seven stations on the original northeast line, 1.4 kilometres from the City Hall interlocking. That is the walk that makes one car workable from this address. Below it, the Bow River pathway joins a City network of roughly a thousand kilometres of regional pathway, of which about four hundred kilometres gets cleared within a day of a snowfall.

East along Centre Avenue the ground opens where the Calgary General Hospital stood from 1910 until the morning of October 4 1998, when it came down in a controlled implosion, and a wall built from brick salvaged out of it stands on that ground. The 1 Avenue NE strip is four blocks east and carries the restaurants, which is far enough that you decide to go rather than drift there. Lukes Drug Mart is closer, at 112 4 Street NE, and it opens at seven. Tom Campbell's Hill rises north and east of the community. Downtown is one bridge away, and from the upper floors on the south face you can see the crossing you would take.

Amenities

Residents share a fitness centre and a landscaped courtyard with a patio and a barbecue area. The parkade runs two levels underground, heated, with titled stalls and visitor stalls beside them. Bicycle storage and assigned storage lockers sit inside.

That is the published list and we are not extending it. We have found no guest suite and no concierge here, which is the ordinary list for a four-storey wood-frame building. The trade is legible enough to read off the elevation. A building of this height carries a smaller monthly bill than a tower with a pool in it, and a resident who wants a pool walks or drives to one.

Edges

Edmonton Trail closes the west and takes the traffic. Memorial Drive and the Bow close the south, which is where the pathway is. The escarpment rises to the north and Renfrew runs its own bluff above it. East, the community grid carries on toward 1 Avenue and Tom Campbell's Hill beyond.

An arterial edge is a real thing to weigh. It buys the shortest run to Memorial Drive and the bridge downtown, and it costs the room tone a mid-grid address would give you. Which way that lands depends on the face your home is on, and it is a question to answer at the showing with a window open. We took the whole community apart in Living in Bridgeland.

The Bridgeland Hill Edit

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

The Bow River pathway
Down the hill at Memorial Drive, part of roughly a thousand kilometres of City regional pathway. About four hundred kilometres of it is cleared within a day of a snowfall.

Lukes Drug Mart
112 4 Street NE. A working pharmacy carrying vinyl, a café, soft serve and a post office, open from seven.

Villa Firenze
610 1 Avenue NE. Pasta made in house, dinner Tuesday through Saturday.

Bridgeland Distillery
77 Edmonton Trail NE, south along your own street. Brandy and whisky made on site, and their own advice is to check the hours before you walk down, since the room books for private events.

We keep the building page current as listings move. Start with Bridgeland Hill condos for sale.