Nearly 13 years after devastating flooding reshaped Calgary communities along the Elbow River, the first six provincially-owned riverfront lots in Roxboro have all sold. The lots located at 112, 116, 122, 220, 310 and 312 Roxboro Road were purchased by the Alberta government following the 2013 flood, then left vacant for more than a decade before being listed in March. Each segment of land quickly attracted strong interest from buyers willing to pay millions of dollars for the chance to build a new home along one of Calgary’s most coveted stretches of riverfront land. According to the province, five of the six lots sold above asking price, while the sixth sold just below list price. For Dennis Plintz, associate broker with the Plintz Real Estate team, the sales represent more than a successful real estate transaction. “I think it’s really exciting for the City of Calgary at every level,” he said. “It just shows confidence in that segment of the market, the city and up stream mitigation.” The six lots were the first phase of a broader provincial effort to return former flood-affected properties to private ownership. Another four lots have now been listed, while a request-for-proposals process has opened for the final seven properties. Strong demand surprises real estate agents The lots were marketed as single-family development opportunities and ranged in value from roughly $1.8 million to more than $5 million. Plintz said his team developed a pricing strategy based on market data and buyer sentiment. Restrictive covenants were also placed on each lot specifying that only single-family homes could be built there. “The pricing strategy was quite specific … We took a very calculated approach to that,” he said. “The demand for these multi-million-dollar riverfront lots, which have to accommodate homes that will be two-to-three times the price of a lot, says a tremendous amount.” While he anticipated interest, Plintz said the level of competition exceeded his expectations. “We were confident there was demand and we were, at the same time, surprised there was as much demand as we were able to generate.” Jeff Jackson, associate broker with the Plintz Real Estate team, says nearly every property received multiple offers. “Several of them sold for over list price and a few for considerably over the list price,” he said. The combined value of the six sales exceeded $15.5 million. Jackson said most buyers were looking to build new homes rather than hold the land for investment purposes. “We’re seeing more and more people trying to get into the luxury market in Calgary, which has been super strong,” he said. Plintz says many purchasers are also longtime Calgarians with strong ties to the city. “The buyers were, interestingly, all Calgarians for the most part,” he said. “It’s really committed Calgarians to riverfront with a lot of confidence.” Neighbours welcome return of development The lots have remained vacant since being acquired by the province after the flood, serving primarily as informal green space. According to Jackson, residents living nearby are eager to see the properties redeveloped. “Neighbors love to come over and talk to us,” he said. “They overwhelmingly were excited to see homes go back on to these bare lots, to have the area revitalized and not have this reminder of the 2013 flood constantly there.” Plintz said the sales have also brought clarity after years of uncertainty about what would ultimately happen to the properties. “There’s been lots of speculation on what would happen with these lots,” he said. “Having them sold to single-family home developers, owners most likely, is really confidence building for Calgary.” The development will also bring significant construction activity to some of Calgary’s most established inner-city neighbourhoods. “Six to 17 homes, luxury homes in a rather small city, are going to put a tremendous amount of demand on trades, and shows a tremendous amount of confidence in the economy,” Plintz said. Flood mitigation transformed outlook The provincial government originally purchased the properties because of concerns about future flooding following the June 2013 disaster. Today, officials say billions of dollars in mitigation work has dramatically changed the risk profile for communities along the Elbow River. “About $1.3 billion has been invested in total into flood resilience over the last 13 years,” said Frank Frigo, manager of environmental management with the City of Calgary. Frigo said approximately 71 per cent of the flood risk that existed in 2013 has now been eliminated through a combination of infrastructure upgrades, monitoring improvements and flood protection projects. Those projects include the Springbank Off-Stream Reservoir, upgrades to the Glenmore Reservoir and Dam, drainage improvements, riverbank stabilization work and enhanced forecasting systems. “The Glenmore Reservoir working with Springbank means that particularly communities along the Elbow River would not see damaging flood conditions for events all the way up to something greater than the one-in-200-year event,” Frigo said. He added that updated provincial flood maps now reflect those improvements and show significantly reduced flood-risk areas along the river. While some risk remains, Frigo said the situation is dramatically different from what existed before the flood. “We’re in a really different place from where we were in 2013,” he said. Provincial flood mapping estimates Roxboro now faces an 8.2 per cent chance of flooding over the next 30 years. “These are very significantly reduced probabilities from what we would have seen prior to any of the mitigation work that occurred following 2013,” Frigo said. Jackson said buyers repeatedly cited the mitigation work as a key factor in their decision-making. “We heard that time and time again from buyers, that they were confident that with that infrastructure upstream, they were comfortable building along the river,” he said. Luxury market remains one of Canada’s strongest The river lot sales come amid continued strength in Calgary’s luxury housing market. Joel Semmens, a real estate associate with Remax House of Real Estate, says high-end sales have surged this year. “We’ve seen 48 per cent higher sales volume in homes over $2 million and above,” he said. Semmens said the Roxboro sales generated significant interest among luxury buyers. “The river lots have been very exciting,” he said. “They’ve all sold in bidding wars before really great numbers, and they’ve actually had just unbelievable amount of response and sales traction.” Unlike previous years, when interprovincial migration played a major role in Calgary’s real estate boom, Semmens said many luxury purchases are now being made by Albertans. “In the ultra luxury high-end market, there’s a little bit of Ontario marketplace there, but more of it’s a local market, which I find very exciting,” he said. For Plintz, the success of the riverfront lot sales reflects confidence not only in Calgary’s luxury market, but in the city’s future. “These sales just instill a really good sense of community and strength to what we have here in Calgary,” he said. Alberta Minister of Infrastructure Martin Long told CTV News in a statement he was pleased to see that two thirds of properties have now been sold. “This is delivering the best value for Albertans by returning these properties to the market and I expect the final batch of the remaining seven properties to be listed in early July,” Long said. “The three-batch approach supports a stable and transparent market release, as opposed to “flooding” the market by putting them for sale all at once.”
