New Eau Claire Plaza to hold grand opening Wednesday
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The plaza connects downtown skyscrapers to the Bow River with a large, open event space, green areas, a water feature and a sandy beach area.
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'Eau Claire Plaza is designed to be that iconic postcard location in downtown Calgary,' said Dennis Hoffart, public realm lead for the city's infrastructure services.
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'Come down here on your lunch hour, read a book, have a stroll along the river, come here for a large cultural festival or event,' he said. 'It's intended for all of Calgary, and for all the visitors to Calgary — today, every day, every season.'
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The space also pays homage to the area's sawmill history with the old Eau Claire and Bow River Lumber Company building, which is currently vacant, and timber design features throughout the area.
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The project also preserved other elements of the original Eau Claire Plaza, including the Olympic arch that was built when Calgary hosted the 1988 Winter Olympics. The beach area also features logs salvaged from trees in the area, and many of the original pavers were saved for use in other projects.
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In addition to the nods to the area's history and the flow from urban to nature, the design of the space was also centred around accessibility.
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'Every piece has been looked at from an accessibility perspective,' said Bryce Miranda, a landscape architect and partner at architecture firm Dialog.
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'You can imagine, a site this big, with all of the grading that we had to work with and all of the stormwater management challenges it has — it was difficult to get it to that point where everything was accessible,' he said. 'But I think we were successful.'
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'There's nothing better, as a landscape architect, to come out and see different types of people, different types of uses happening within the space,' Miranda said.
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