What’s Happening with the Former CBE Headquarters

What’s Happening with the Former CBE Headquarters Used by the Calgary Board of Education until 2011, we check in on what is happening with the redevelopment of this building. By Andrew Guilbert May 20, 2015 This photo from 1973 shows the Brotherhood of Mankind statues in front of the former…

What’s Happening with the Former CBE Headquarters

Used by the Calgary Board of Education until 2011, we check in on what is happening with the redevelopment of this building.

This photo from 1973 shows the Brotherhood of Mankind statues in front of the former CBE headquarters.

Image from City of Calgary, Corporat Records, Archives

The tall, slender figures that form Brotherhood of Mankind, the statues outside the old Calgary Board of Education building, stand in stark contrast to the concrete hulk of brutalist architecture that rests behind them. The hard lines and unpretentious presentation of the five-storey edifice dwarf the sleek, 21-foot-tall figures. And, though the statues became the school board’s emblem, the building at 515 Macleod Tr. S.E. is an equally distinctive symbol of the CBE.

Having completed the building in 1969 as part of an urban-renewal project at a cost of more than $3.5 million, the CBE used the site as its headquarters until 2011 before moving to a new home in the Beltline, and then sold it in April 2012 for $36.5 million. Since then, not much has happened to the site.

GWL Realty Advisors, development manager of the project, has been working on environmental remediation of the site, including removal of material damaged in the 2013 flood, and expects to finish the process this year. In a statement released to Avenue, Susan MacLaurin of GWL writes: “Planning for the redevelopment of the [former CBE] site is ongoing. It’s expected that the final plan will take into account the long-term, forecasted growth in demand for office and mixed-use space in Calgary’s Central Business District.”

In other words, as far as redevelopment goes, we’ll just have to wait and see.

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