McKenzie Towne is a master planned residential neighbourhood in the southeast of

Calgary Calgary () is a major city in the Canadian province of Alberta. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806 making it the third-largest city and fifth-largest metropolitan area in C ...

Alberta Alberta is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Canada. It is a part of Western Canada and is one of the three Canadian Prairies, prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to its west, Saskatchewan to its east, t ...

being developed by Carma Developers LP (now Brookfield Residential Properties Inc.). The community is bordered on the west by

Deerfoot Trail Deerfoot Trail is a freeway segment of Alberta Highway 2, Highway 2 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. It stretches the entire length of the city from south to north and links suburbs to Downtown Calgary, downtown via Memorial Drive (Cal ...

, on the south by

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, on the east by 52 St. S.E., and to the north by the South Trail regional commercial centre along 130 Ave. S.E. McKenzie Towne boasts many recreational features, including: the McKenzie Towne Hall managed and operated by the staff and Board of Directors of the McKenzie Towne Council (which is the community's Residents' Association). Within the Hall: a gymnasium, meeting and banquet facilities, and a private outdoor park area. The Council offers recreational programming for children, youth, families adults and seniors, as well as facility rentals for events. The Council also runs community events and looks after the landscaping and maintenance of green spaces and amenities. The community also has a network of paved pathways, green spaces and parks; a fountain and splash park; an outdoor hockey rink and skate park and numerous ponds also complement McKenzie Towne. McKenzie Towne also contains one separate school board elementary school and a public elementary school.

Developments

McKenzie Towne is a master planned Neotraditional Community, reflecting a small town. It comes complete with both street front retail, midsize commercial offerings, a wide variety of single family homes, apartments, town houses, churches, seniors care facilities, public and separate board elementary schools, and traditional

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and construction, constructi ...

. The neighbourhood was based on the

new urbanist New Urbanism is an urban design movement that promotes environmentally friendly habits by creating walkable neighbourhoods containing a wide range of housing and job types. It arose in the United States in the early 1980s, and has gradually in ...

movement and original concepts were crafted by

Andres Duany Andres or Andrés may refer to: *Andres, Illinois, an unincorporated community in Will County, Illinois, US *Andres, Pas-de-Calais, a commune in Pas-de-Calais, France *Andres (name) *Hurricane Andres * "Andres" (song), a 1994 song by L7 See also ...

who was the same architect to model

Seaside, Florida Seaside is an unincorporated master-planned community on the Florida Panhandle in Walton County, between Panama City Beach and Destin. One of the first communities in America designed on the principles of New Urbanism, which promotes walkabil ...

(the filming location of ''

The Truman Show ''The Truman Show'' is a 1998 American Psychological film, psychological comedy-drama film written and co-produced by Andrew Niccol, and directed by Peter Weir. The film depicts the story of Truman Burbank (played by Jim Carrey), a man who is un ...

'' movie). McKenzie Towne was selected by the Urban Land Institute as one of the top 26 master planned communities in the world. The neighbourhood is divided into four distinct areas: ''Inverness'', ''Elgin'', ''Prestwick'', and ''High Street''. Each of the three areas of McKenzie Towne offer complementing architectural styles. Elgin features six styles of architecture designed to reflect

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

. English Cottage,

Greek Revival Greek Revival architecture is a architectural style, style that began in the middle of the 18th century but which particularly flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in northern Europe, the United States, and Canada, ...

, English Tudor, French Eclectic,

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style combined its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century It ...

, and English

Arts & Crafts The Arts and Crafts movement was an international trend in the decorative and fine arts that developed earliest and most fully in the British Isles and subsequently spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and America. Initiat ...

. Prestwick and Inverness follows four styles: Queen Anne (Victorian), Georgian,

Craftsman Craftsman may refer to: A profession *Artisan, a skilled manual worker who makes items that may be functional or strictly decorative *Master craftsman, an artisan who has achieved such a standard that he may establish his own workshop and take o ...

, and National. High Street is the commercial area, designed by Gibbs Gage Architects. It features street oriented commercial with many small businesses and complemented with larger well known retail tenants and a major grocery store.

Education

There are three schools in McKenzie Towne, the

Calgary Catholic School District Calgary Roman Catholic Separate School District No. 1 or the Calgary Catholic School District (CCSD) is the Roman Catholic separate school board in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. It also serves the neighbouring communities of Airdrie, Chestermere, ...

has St. Albert The Great (K-9) in the community.

Calgary Board of Education Calgary School District No. 19 or the Calgary Board of Education (CBE) is the public school board in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. As a public system, the CBE is required to accept any students who meet age and residency requirements, regardless of ...

has two schools in the community McKenzie Towne Elementary (K-4) and a McKenzie Highlands School (5-9).

Demographics

In the City of Calgary's 2012 municipal census, McKenzie Towne had a population of living in dwellings, a 4.6% increase from its 2011 population of . With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2012. Residents in this community had a

median household income The median income is the income amount that divides a population into two groups, half having an income above that amount, and half having an income below that amount. It may differ from the mean (or average) income. Both of these are ways of und ...

of $75,325 in 2000, and there were 4.6% low income residents living in the neighbourhood. As of 2000, 11.9% of the residents were

immigrant Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not usual residents or where they do not possess nationality in order to settle as permanent residents. Commuters, tourists, and other short- ...

s. A proportion of 8.9% of the buildings were

condominium A condominium (or condo for short) is an ownership regime in which a building (or group of buildings) is divided into multiple units that are either each separately owned, or owned in common with exclusive rights of occupation by individual own ...

s or

apartment An apartment (American English, Canadian English), flat (British English, Indian English, South African English), tenement (Scots English), or unit (Australian English) is a self-contained housing unit (a type of residential real estate) that ...

s, and 4% of the housing was used for

renting Renting, also known as hiring or letting, is an agreement where a payment is made for the use of a good, service or property owned by another over a fixed period of time. To maintain such an agreement, a rental agreement (or lease) is sig ...

Commercial development

The main commercial area within McKenzie Towne is the High Street shopping area, a streetscape-style shopping centre anchored at present by a

Sobeys Sobeys Inc. is a national supermarket chain in Canada with over 1,500 stores operating under a variety of banners. Headquartered in Stellarton, Nova Scotia, it operates stores in all ten provinces and accumulated sales of more than C$25.1 bil ...

grocery store and a number of smaller chain and independent retail outlets and restaurants. The major big-box shopping district South Trail Crossing is located along 130th Avenue S.E. along the northern boundary of the Prestwick district and features major retailers such as

Wal-Mart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores in the United States and 23 other ...

. Additional smaller neighbourhood retail is located at several other locations within McKenzie Towne.

Transit

A "park and ride" facility has been constructed adjacent to the High Street shopping area off 52nd Street S.E., and is a hub for the region's current BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) line connecting to downtown; in the future (time-frame yet to be determined), BRT service is to be replaced by a full LRT (Light Rapid Transit) line, with a station earmarked next to the park and ride.

References

External links

Local McKenzie Towne Community web site profile
Local Builders in McKenzie Towne
Vaughan Custom Builders & Design
{{Calgary neighbourhoods Neighbourhoods in Calgary New Urbanism communities