Living at Verve, East Village, Calgary

The Atlas

The building has two outdoor rooms and they are twenty floors apart. One sits on the sixth, with a hot tub, a gas fire pit and enough barbecues that a Saturday can happen without anybody leaving the block. The other sits at the top and looks over the Bow. In between is a neighbourhood that was rebuilt from the ground up inside twenty years, so the walk to a library, an island, a music museum or a bakery in a 1912 mattress factory is measured in minutes.

Grounds

Verve stands at 615 6 Avenue SE, on the block bounded by 5 and 6 Streets SE and by 6 and 7 Avenues SE, in East Village.

East Village holds the earliest-settled land in the Calgary area and it spent the back half of the twentieth century cut off from the core. Council approved a redevelopment plan in March 2005 and the Calgary Municipal Land Corporation was created in 2007 to carry it out. The roads were lifted above the flood plain, with the utility work finishing in 2015. That is the reason the ground under this building sits a little higher than it used to, and it is the reason the sidewalks are all one age.

The Jack and Jean Leslie RiverWalk opened along the Bow's south bank in 2012 and the district connects straight into the pathway network the city bills as the largest in North America.

Homes

Two hundred and eighty-eight homes, completed in January 2018. Building registers put the tower at 25 storeys and about 82 metres, with Giannone Petricone Associates credited on the architecture and Cecconi Simone on the interiors. Storey counts for this building are not settled outside those registers, so we are giving the figure with its source attached instead of stating it flatly.

The Calgary Municipal Land Corporation signed East Village's second major land development deal in 2011, with the Ontario-based FRAM Building Group and the Slokker Real Estate Group. Verve is the second of that partnership's two projects in the community and it sold out.

Read what that history does to the plan. A tower drawn for a district being built at the same time gets to point its windows at things that did not exist yet, which is why the north and west exposures here are river and skyline rather than the back of something.

Everyday

The Central Library sits a few blocks southwest at 800 3 Street SE, opened on November 1 2018, a Snøhetta and DIALOG building of roughly 240,000 square feet lifted a level above the street so the Red Line runs underneath it. The arches inside were drawn off the chinook arch, and there is a 340-seat theatre at street level.

Studio Bell is a few blocks south, home of the National Music Centre and the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, wrapped around the King Edward Hotel of 1905, the oldest operating hotel in the city and a blues room for much of its life. The Simmons mattress factory of 1912 sits on the RiverWalk and holds a bakery and a coffee roaster, with a wood fire steakhouse at the river end.

North across the George C. King Bridge is St Patrick's Island, thirty-one acres of park at the confluence. The Confluence Historic Site and Parkland is a short walk east. Groceries and the daily list run west into the core on foot, and the 7 Avenue corridor is four blocks north.

Amenities

The amenity floor is the sixth. A fitness centre and a yoga space sit alongside a party room carrying a fireplace and a full kitchen, and the terrace beyond it holds barbecues, a gas fire pit, a jacuzzi and seating.

A second terrace on the twenty-fifth floor looks over the river and the skyline. Tour both before you decide, because they do different jobs. The sixth is where you cook for eight. The top is where you go with one coffee.

Concierge and security run twenty-four hours a day. The parkade is heated and underground with titled stalls, visitor parking sits below grade, homes carry a separate storage locker, and guest suites are available to rent. Fee inclusions and house rules change at a vote, so read the current condominium documents before any of it decides anything for you.

Edges

The Bow closes the north and the RiverWalk runs the bank. The CP tracks and 9 Avenue close the south, with The Confluence beyond them where the Elbow comes in. West, the Municipal Building and the core. East, the river bends and the island sits in it.

Across the water north, Bridgeland climbs its hill. Downstream on the far bank, Inglewood runs the older main street. The wider map sits on the full neighbourhoods index.

The Verve Edit

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

St Patrick's Island Park
Over the George C. King Bridge. Thirty-one acres, reopened in 2015. A pebble beach, a wading breach, a knoll that toboggans in winter, and Michel de Broin's Bloom standing at the tip.

Calgary Central Library
800 3 Street SE. Snøhetta and DIALOG, open since November 2018, with the trains running under the floor and a theatre at street level.

Studio Bell
The National Music Centre, ten until five. Built around the King Edward Hotel of 1905, which closed as a hotel in 2004 and reopened in 2018 as a music room.

Sidewalk Citizen Bakery
618 Confluence Way SE, in the Simmons Building. Half seven in the morning until two, until three at the weekend, or until the shelves go.

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