Living at Nova, Calgary

The Atlas

The middle tower is the one people mix up, and after a month you stop correcting them. What you notice instead is the podium, because the townhomes and the shopfronts run continuously past all three addresses, so the walk from your door to the next lobby never leaves the building. Groceries are one street over and the strip is five blocks south. The rest of the year happens on 12 Avenue.

Grounds

Nova stands at 1118 12 Avenue, in the Connaught side of the Beltline. Twelfth Avenue runs east and west through the middle of the district, carrying a separated cycle track and a good share of the local traffic on foot. The land is flat and the block is long. Nova is the middle building of a trio, with Stella first in 2006 and Luna finishing the group in 2012, and the three sit side by side along the avenue connected by a podium of townhomes and commercial space. Stella at twenty storeys and 161 homes opened the run and Luna at thirty storeys and 218 homes closed it, so the trio steps up in height across the six years it took to build.

Reading the three as one project rather than three separate addresses is the useful thing to know about this block, because the podium is continuous and the towers were drawn together. The Beltline itself was formed in 2003 out of Connaught and Victoria Park, and the district name comes from an early twentieth-century streetcar route. Connaught is the older half, which is why two blocks west of a thirty-storey tower you are looking at walk-ups and houses.

Homes

Nova completed in 2008 for Qualex-Landmark. Rafii Architects was design architect, working with the local practice BKDI Architects. The trade press reads the tower at twenty-seven storeys and 188 homes, and records that it sold out in a single weekend. The architects publish three storey figures for the three towers without saying which belongs to which, and none of the three is twenty-seven, so we have given the trade press figure with its source attached and left the matter there. Each home carries an assigned storage locker and parking is titled and underground.

Everyday

The Co-op Midtown food store sits at 1130 11 Avenue SW, one street north, open from seven in the morning until ten at night, which settles the grocery question without a car. The 11 Avenue and 12 Avenue rooms handle dinner. Central Memorial Park is a few blocks east along the same avenue, planting laid out in 1889 with the sandstone library of 1912 at its east end, both named a National Historic Site of Canada in 2018. Seventeenth Avenue SW is five blocks south. The 7 Avenue corridor is north, where 8 Street SW station serves both CTrain lines, so a downtown commute here is a walk and one platform. Northwest of the block the grid runs down to the Bow, and the river pathway is a short ride on the cycle track outside the door.

Amenities

The fitness centre carries a steam room. Residents share an owners' lounge, and two guest suites are held for visitors, which is the amenity people forget to check for and then use four times a year. Each home carries an assigned storage locker. Parking is titled and underground, and a concierge works the lobby. The list is shorter than what the newer towers on this stretch publish. Read it against the podium, since the shops and the townhomes at grade are doing part of the work an amenity floor would otherwise have to do.

Edges

Twelfth Avenue is the front, and its separated cycle track runs along all three buildings, which is the piece of infrastructure doing the daily work on this block, since it reaches the river pathway without putting a rider into traffic. The two sister towers hold the east and the west, which means this address has neighbours on its own sidewalk in a way a standalone tower does not. North of the block the grid runs toward the tracks and the platforms. South of it the residential streets fall away toward 17 Avenue. Nothing here borders a park or a river, so the boundaries are all made of other buildings and the street between them. West across 14 Street, Sunalta picks up the older houses. Across the Elbow to the east, Inglewood keeps the older main street. We wrote about the district in Living in Beltline, and the wider map sits on the full neighbourhoods index.

The Nova Edit

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

Lougheed House and Beaulieu Gardens
707 13 Avenue SW. An 1891 sandstone mansion on a city block of garden, a National and a Provincial Historic Site, with the grounds open long past the house.

Cowboys Park
1220 9 Avenue SW. Seventy-five thousand square feet of concrete, built in 2000 and the largest skatepark in the country when it opened. It carried the name Shaw Millennium Park until July 2024.

Co-op Midtown
1130 11 Avenue SW. One street north, seven in the morning to ten at night, the whole grocery run.

Monki Breakfast Club and Bistro
1301 10 Avenue SW. Two streets over. Breakfast that runs late enough to count as a plan.

We keep the listings on the building page, updated as the market moves. Start with Nova condos for sale.