Living at Park Point, Calgary

The Atlas

You take the park before you take the building. Thirty-four floors of black and white glass on the north side of 12 Avenue, and across the street a Victorian square laid out in 1889 with a cenotaph in it and elms over the walks. The window bay in your living room was drawn to look at that. After a week you stop noticing the height and start noticing which corner of the park the light leaves last.

Grounds

Park Point stands at 310 12 Avenue SW, on the north side of the avenue facing Central Memorial Park. The park is a full city block, 4.68 acres between 12 and 13 Avenues from 2 Street to 4 Street, laid out in 1889 and landscaped in the Victorian manner. A cenotaph was dedicated in it on November 11 1928. An equestrian bronze of Russell Lambert Boyle, sculpted by Louis Philippe Hébert and unveiled in 1914, marks the Albertans who fought in the Second Boer War, and a First World War soldier raised by the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire keeps the ground outside the library. The park went through a full revitalisation across 2008 and 2009 and reopened in May 2010, which is why it reads as maintained rather than as a survival.

The Memorial Park Library holds the park's east end. It opened on January 2 1912 to a design by the Boston firm McLean and Wright, Edwardian Classical, and it was the first purpose-built public library in Alberta. In January 2018, the year the tower topped out, the park and the library together were designated the Central Memorial Park and Library National Historic Site of Canada. The address across the street inherits all of it without paying for the maintenance.

Homes

Thirty-four storeys and 289 homes, with live-work townhomes at the ground level, finished in 2018. Qualex-Landmark developed it. IBI Group drew it, the firm now inside Arcadis, with Tony Wai leading the design. Trepp Design did the interiors and Durante Kreuk drew the landscape. Axiom Builders held the contract. Construction started in 2015 and the ribbon was cut on August 9 2018.

The elevation is the argument. Six black and white framed window bays run down each side of the tower, so the facade reads as a stack of bays, and inside a home that shows up as one deep opening rather than a wall of glass. The plans run to eight configurations. Anyone comparing this tower to its neighbours is comparing a park view to a street view, and the park view is the whole reason the building is shaped the way it is.

Everyday

Seventeenth Avenue SW is five blocks south and carries the dinner list. The 7 Avenue transit corridor is four blocks north, where 1 Street SW and Centre Street stations serve both CTrain lines, so a household here can run one car and stop discussing it. Groceries and a bank run sit inside the same short radius. The park does the rest. It fills at lunch with people out of the office towers and empties by two. After five it fills again, with dogs and strollers and a bike leaned on a bench and somebody reading. Winter takes the crowd out of it and leaves the light, which through bare elms onto snow is the reason to have a window on that side.

Amenities

The third-floor amenity run faces the park. A gym sits up there with a yoga and pilates studio beside it, and a steam room and sauna with change rooms behind those. A private owners' lounge carries its own kitchen for the nights that need a bigger table than your own. The outdoor terrace has a fire pit and a barbecue area. A concierge works the desk around the clock.

Parking is titled and underground. Bicycle storage runs with a maintenance area, which is the detail that tells you somebody thought about the person who commutes on two wheels in April. The landscaped garden is the number that sticks. Qualex-Landmark puts it at 9,000 square feet carrying 2,302 plants and 48 trees, and a count like that is either marketing or a planting schedule somebody actually kept. We are inclined to believe the schedule.

Edges

The park closes the south side of the address and nothing will ever be built on it. Seventeenth Avenue draws the far southern line of the district. The 7 Avenue corridor and the office towers close the north. East along 12 Avenue the Beltline runs into Victoria Park and the Stampede grounds, and west it thins toward 14 Street. The Beltline itself was assembled in 2003 out of Connaught and Victoria Park, and it takes its name from an early streetcar route. The wider map sits on the full neighbourhoods index.

The Park Point Edit

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

Central Memorial Park
Across the street, 4.68 acres, complete by 1912. Take the diagonal walk at dusk in October.

Memorial Park Library
The park's east end since January 1912, Edwardian Classical, Alberta's first purpose-built public library. Still lending.

Ten Foot Henry
1209 1 Street SW, open eleven to eleven every day. Vegetable-led and family style, and it does not mind that you walked in.

Native Tongues Taqueria
235 12 Avenue SW, the same avenue, two minutes on foot. A taqueria counter and a mezcal list, in a room that gets loud on purpose.

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