Graywood Developments is making its first moves in Calgary with Fish Creek Exchange, a multi-phase community on a 24-acre infill site adjacent to Canada’s second-largest urban park.

While Toronto-based Graywood has been largely GTA-focused till now — it built The Ritz-Carlton and is developing Scoop — president and CEO Stephen Price said the company has been mulling other markets to expand into, and eyeing Calgary for close to a decade.

Presented with the opportunity to acquire the former golf course lands for Fish Creek Exchange, “we thought it was a good fit, given the timing of Calgary’s economic cycle.”

Oil price declines made for an attractive purchase price, Price said, and the property’s locational elements — next to an LRT line and on the doorstep of Fish Creek Park — were also alluring.

Plus the infill site is surrounded by a built-up community, “but there’s not a lot of significant or new housing opportunities within the market,” Price said.

The project's first phase will have 142 residential units in four-storey stick-frame buildings and two-storey townhouses.

There will be 7,500 SF of retail in the initial buildings, and there will be a grocery store in a future phase, according to Graywood’s Calgary development director, Patrick Briscoe.