Uncertainty hangs over Calgary's Eau Claire district with Green Line LRT in limbo

An Eau Claire resident forced out when his property was was expropriated for the Green Line LRT is railing against the city over its management of the project.

"I don't think it's on the province, I think it's on the city," Patrick Lindsay told CBC News.

"It's been a disaster for so many years," he said. "As a homeowner who's very impacted by it, we watched very closely, and we've seen the City of Calgary approve a Green Line alignment three times without ever producing a credible cost-benefit analysis or business case."

The Green Line project is being wound down with costs totalling $2.1 billion, including $850 million to gradually halt work on the project. The move came weeks after Transportation Minister Devin Dreeshen withdrew the province's share of funding for the transit expansion on Sept. 3.

The transit project has a tumultuous history dating back more than a decade. The city and province have been engaged recently in a war of words over who is to blame for it going off the rails.

The province contracted infrastructure consulting firm AECOM to design a new alignment for the LRT project by the end of the year. Premier Danielle Smith and Dreeshen have made it clear they want to scrap plans to tunnel through downtown Calgary and instead lay tracks above ground to extend the line south to Seton.

Lindsay used to live in the River Run townhouse complex before the city took over to demolish the properties and clear the way for a new development focused on a Green Line station. He was forced out at the end of May. Months later, the buildings are still standing.

"From my perspective as a homeowner, I had no reasonable expectation that our home would ever be used for the Green Line because they didn't know if they would ever get there," Lindsay said. 

He doesn't think it's an option to go back to live where he once did but would do so given the opportunity.

"We wouldn't trust the city to get involved in those kinds of discussions, [but] I would love to live where I was.… [We] had a waterfront property, four storeys, four bedrooms, right across from Prince's Island Park," he said. 

"On our patio, you don't see a road, you don't see a power line. It's just like sitting on a park. It's fantastic property, which is likely why the city wanted it."

Eau Claire Market was bought by property company Harvard Developments in 2004. Some of that land was sold to the City of Calgary in 2023 to build an underground Green Line LRT station. The shopping mall was shuttered at the end of May, the same time many nearby residents were forced to leave their homes.

Given the province has said it wants to avoid tunnelling through downtown Calgary for the transit expansion, it's unclear what form an LRT station would take in the downtown neighbourhood or whether the province would use the land in its new alignment.

Harvard Developments had plans to redevelop the Eau Claire Market land into a mixed-use project with the Green Line in mind.