Arts Commons Transformation - Celebrates Business Excellence

BUILDING COMMUNITY AND CULTURAL IDENTITY

with the Arts Commons Transformation

Written by Rennay Craats • Published by Courtney Lovgren

The arts define a city’s cultural identity and reflect its history while paving the way for its future. The heart and soul of a vibrant city is its arts and culture sector, and for Calgary, that is Arts Commons.

Housed on a central city block, Arts Commons has brought world-class arts and culture programming to Calgary since 1985. As the city grew, the three original resident organizations, Theatre Calgary, Alberta Theatre Projects and the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, were soon hosting 300,000 visitors per year in a city with a population of only 600,000. Demand spurred the addition of three more theatres allowing Arts Commons to welcome One Yellow Rabbit, Downstage and the programming arm of the organization, Arts Commons Presents.

The space was rebranded as Arts Commons in 2014 to reflect the wide scope of programming and highlight the concept of town squares (or commons) where people gather to share ideas and tell stories. While the name may have changed, the organization never wavered in its dedication to fostering, promoting and celebrating a vibrant arts community in Calgary.

“Calgary has such an amazing artist community and a variety of arts organizations, and for us to be able to steward and welcome, host and represent that large and growing diversity is so exciting. For the artist community to have a campus where they can share spaces, share resources and come together is essential for the prosperity of arts organizations,” says Alex Sarian, president and CEO, Arts Commons.

The resident organizations and more than 200 community groups and commercial presenters using the spaces attract incredible interest and support from patrons. Arts Commons hosts more than 2,000 events and welcomes more than 600,000 people into the building annually. As the largest arts centre in Western Canada and the third-largest in the country, Arts Commons is a definite hub for Calgary’s arts and culture scene.

For this impressive facility to continue providing accessible, sustainable arts programming, it needed to grow. After years of consultation and consideration about how best to both reimagine the area and reinvigorate downtown, The City of Calgary, Calgary Municipal Land Corporation (CMLC) and Arts Commons partnered on an ambitious $660M transformation plan. Now, there are designs for a new building, which will expand and modernize the campus and elevate Calgary’s arts and culture sector and the downtown core.

“We’ve had long-held goals in this part of downtown to really refresh and revitalize the infrastructure and make a significant impact in the old arts and culture sector,” says Thom Mahler, director of Downtown Strategy, City of Calgary. “It’s a pretty transformational project which really recognizes Calgary’s evolution as a major city on the global stage with an infrastructure that represents that. Part of this is status but part is providing a level of service that Calgarians have been lacking and that a city of our size should provide.”

As development manager for the project, CMLC has brought together an incredible team of professionals tasked with the design vision and delivery of the project that will include the expansion of a new building, additional performing arts spaces, a massive renovation of the existing facility and the inclusion of inviting public spaces that’ll be available and accessible to all Calgarians.

Since the onset of the project, CMLC set out to find the perfect design team to deliver these lofty goals. They scrutinized nearly 30 proposals before landing on three architecture and design firms that aligned with the vision of the project and had the expertise to execute it.

Toronto-based KPMB Architects is heading the collaboration, bringing with it vast experience on major theatre projects including Massey Hall + Allied Music Centre in Toronto and the Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity. TAWAW Architecture Collective Inc., led by Canada’s first female First Nations architect Wanda Dalla Costa, introduces an Indigenous perspective with the firm’s human-centred design, and Hindle Architects is a trusted and highly esteemed firm in Calgary. The design team also has a supporting cast of consultants essential for complicated theatre projects, from engineers and acousticians to cost consultants and accessibility planners.

“We were looking for a design team that has a proven record of delivering inspiring and inclusive designs. They also needed to share an understanding and appreciation

for our vision of a building that would add to Calgary and really renew interest in the existing historic building,” says Kate Thompson, president and CEO, CMLC. “We brought together a team of both local and global leaders in the field of theatre design and programming that understands not just how to build a great space of brick and mortar but how people might come and use the spaces.”

Thompson continued, “There is an elevated architectural bar set by iconic projects like the Central Library and BMO Convention Centre, and this team is up to reaching and exceeding it. Together they’ve produced high-calibre designs that represent the first steps in revitalizing the city block and setting the tone for the modernization and transformation projects that will follow.”

Kate Thompson, President and CEO of CMLC.

CMLC President and CEO Kate Thompson, Mayor Jyoti Gondek, and Arts Commons President and CEO Alex Sarian with CMLC VP of Building and Infrastructure Kelly Coles and members of the ACT prime design team, Tawaw’s Wanda Dalla Costa, KPMB’s Kevin Bridgman, and Hindle’s Jesse Hindle.

Photos courtesy of CMLC.

The ABCs of ACT

The first phase the project is an expansion that involves building a three-level, 160,000-square-foot space on the west side of Olympic Plaza that will introduce two new theatre venues to the Arts Commons ecosystem. The large multipurpose room was designed for function and versatility, with its 1,000-person seated capacity jumping to almost 1,500 when converted from raked theatre seating into a flat-floor space. The second venue, a 200-patron studio theatre, will have customizable seating configurations to accommodate any artistic vision. It will also have a thoughtful integration leading into Olympic Plaza which will enable seamless and exciting programming inside and out. A key component to the design is making the building feel connected to the city and this openness will allow programming to spill out and draw citizens in.

These venues sit flush to 8 Avenue to encourage transparency, inclusivity and public accessibility. Instead of being an imposing structure, the new building leans back from Olympic Plaza and welcomes people inside. The design team strove to deliver a space where people from all walks of life can gather for diverse arts and cultural experiences that aren’t always predicated on purchasing a ticket. With the open frontage, warm, welcoming lodgeinspired interior and innovative programming, these venues will surely reflect and serve today’s Calgarians well.

“Instead of steel or concrete columns there will be big, beautiful Canadian mass timber columns. It’s not a gold leaf theatre. It will be rugged, durable and flexible and it will be able to host an opera and a rock show on different nights, and we hope crowds will feel very comfortable and at ease whatever event is happening there,” says Kevin Bridgman, principal, KPMB.

Construction is slated to begin in late 2024 with completion estimated for the 2028-2029 Arts Commons season.

Concurrently, the team is advancing the design for the second phase of the transformation, the modernization of the existing Arts Commons spaces and, in 2023, CMLC engaged a design team to reimagine Olympic Plaza, which will a create more accessible, active, efficient and flexible gathering spaces in the core. The final result will be a cohesive, connected artsfocused campus spanning about 1 million square feet that will elicit a sense of belonging in this unique arts environment.

On top of creating a beautiful campus, ACT is also shifting to a more self-sustainable business model to decrease dependence on government funding. The Arts Commons Transformation is an integral part of the City’s efforts to economically and socially reinvigorate the downtown core, and a healthy arts and culture sector will contribute significantly to those efforts.

“Part of downtown revitalization is giving people a reason to come downtown, something to add to the vibrancy and amenities of our downtown,” says Thompson. “We know we’re successful when people start coming down even

when they don’t know what programming is planned but they know it’s the place to be.”

As Calgary reinvents itself, the ACT team offers its answer to the question of what this new Calgary should be: an innovative and diverse city that embraces unique and inclusive arts and culture programming. It’s no wonder that the world is taking notice as this new iteration of Calgary and its arts scene emerges.

“The Arts Commons Transformation is largest arts-focused infrastructure project underway in Canada. For that to be taking place in Calgary is incredibly exciting, and it speaks to the excitement that exists within and about Calgary as a city,” says Sarian. “We’re not building an elitist temple for arts and culture. We’re actually aligning the evolution of who we are as an organization to the evolution of Calgary as a city.”

And the expanded Arts Commons campus will attract visitors, engage Calgarians and keep the heart of this vibrant city beating strongly as the city continues to evolve into the future.

Photos courtesy of CMLC.