Former Mayor of Denver has advice for Calgary’s economic downturn
Posted May 17, 2017 9:32 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
With Calgary still suffering through a downturn in the economy, a former U.S. mayor has some advice to get out of it.
Former Mayor of Denver Federico Pena spoke at a Fireside Chat hosted by Urban Land Institute Alberta Wednesday, about ways Calgary could learn from Denver who went through a similar recession in the 1980s.
Pena says when oil went down they began to make strategic investments in things like residential housing.
“Today, there is 25 thousand people living in downtown Denver, back in the 80’s there was hardly anybody in downtown Denver so you have to make it a 24-hour activity centre and that’s why bringing people in to live and you’ll find out that they’ll work you’ll find out that all of a sudden you’ll have grocery stores in downtown Denver, you’ll have more arts, more entertainment and then it becomes a community,” said Pena.
Pena says the transformation doesn’t happen overnight.
“Explain to people why it’s important to make these investments because they cost money. What the benefit is going to be, what the return is going to be, how is this going to improve everybody’s quality of life how are you going to be positively affected and when you explain that time and time again, because you have to do it regularly with most people, not everybody but most people would say you know what that makes sense why don’t we get behind it and support it.”
Pena believes Calgary has huge potential and he sees a lot of things being done to help bring the economy back, but he says the challenge now is to diversify the economy a little more, build on the city’s natural assets and bring in people from all walks of life to be a part of the process.
The investments made in Denver were done over a 35-year period.
