Highland Park

The Atlas

You start timing your mornings by the Centre Street bus in Highland Park, then discover you rarely need the schedule because another one is always coming. The Italian market down the corridor turns your Saturday errand into a lunch, the rink turns your winter Tuesdays social, and the framing crews two streets over keep confirming the direction the block is headed.

Grounds

High, level ground north of the escarpment communities, straddling the Centre Street corridor around 40th Avenue. The elevation earns slices of skyline from the right corners without ever making a feature of it, and we have a list of the corners. Centre Street carries the buses, the bakeries, the pho rooms and the through-traffic, and the residential streets peel off it and settle within a block, which is a shorter distance than the map leads anyone to expect. The community's western flank runs down toward Confederation Park's east end and its eastern side toward the industrial lands along the tracks, so the neighbourhood holds a mixed edge, houses on one side and warehouses on the other, which is part of why it has stayed within reach for as long as it has.

The land came into the city in 1910 and sat as homesteads for a generation. Highland Park was established in 1946 and filled through the oil-boom years that followed, low postwar houses on a plain grid. In 1965 a golf course opened on the ground the city had written off as unsuitable for houses, nine holes on seventeen hectares inside an inner-city community, and it ran until 2011. The land was sold in 2012 and has been working through a redevelopment plan since, mixed housing and commercial where the greens were. That parcel is the single largest thing that will happen to this neighbourhood in the next decade, and it is the reason the framing crews arrived early. We watch its file as closely as any in the northwest. A community that spent fifty years wrapped around a golf course is now wrapped around a construction schedule, and the streets nearest the old greens will look different by the time the plan finishes than they did when it started.

Homes

Postwar bungalows and an advancing line of infill semis, with the semis now winning the count on many streets. This is one of the corridors where the inner city is visibly renewing itself, original house, new pair, original house, in sequence down a block until the sequence breaks. The original stock is small, plain postwar building, and it comes on lots that support a rebuild, which is the combination that draws builders. Highland Park has priced its inner-city position below the bluff communities to the south for decades, and that gap is the reason it keeps appearing on first-purchase shortlists. Buyers looking for a detached house inside the city with room to grow into it tend to find this grid on the second weekend of looking, and buy on the fourth. What changes the calculation from here on is the golf course land. A large parcel redeveloping inside an established community reshapes what the community is, and the streets nearest it will feel that first. Anyone buying on this grid is buying a block and a plan at the same time, which is the sentence we would put at the top of every listing here if listings worked that way.

Everyday

The community hall and rink hold the middle of the neighbourhood, and the association floods the ice as soon as the weather allows. Centre Street covers the daily list and the direct bus downtown, and the corridor's businesses run to pho rooms, bakeries, groceries and delis rather than anything designed for visitors. Confederation Park's east end sits down the hill to the southwest for the longer walks, the golf course, the pathway and the poplars. Schools sit inside the grid, and the ball diamonds and the rink sit beside the hall. The Italian grocery down Centre supplies the pantry upgrades and a deli counter that organizes half the quadrant's Saturdays. The community association has been unusually active on planning files for years, which is what happens when a neighbourhood has twenty hectares of its own future sitting under review. Summer runs on the ball diamonds and the gardens. Winter narrows the whole system to Centre Street and the rink, which turns out to be enough, and the deli counter carries more of the winter than the rink does, in our experience.

Edges

The Centre Street corridor runs the middle, McKnight's approach closes the north, the escarpment communities sit south, and the tracks and industrial lands hold the east. Down Centre, Tuxedo Park continues the same avenue at a lower house number. Southwest, Mount Pleasant holds the park. East across Edmonton Trail's flank, Winston Heights and Mountview keeps the golf course that is still a golf course. The wider map sits on the full neighbourhoods index.

The Highland Park Edit

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

Confederation Park
Down the hill to the southwest. The big green for the long walks.

Centre Street North
Pho, bakeries, groceries and delis in a row. The corridor does the daily work.

Lina's Italian Market
Down Centre Street. Groceries and a deli counter, and lunch if you stand in the line.

The community rink
Beside the hall, flooded as soon as the weather allows.

We keep the listings on the neighbourhood page, updated as the market moves. Start with Highland Park homes for sale.