Family on a "mini-vacation every day" at their new Auburn Bay home

The moment Jennifer and Justin Humphries drove through the entrance gates into Auburn Bay, one of Calgary's newest lake communities, they were sold on the lake lifestyle. That was five years ago in 2012, when the couple was living in McKenzie Towne and had recently had their first child. They wanted more from their neighbourhood, and lake living was a top priority. Auburn Bay checked all of the couple's boxes.

Demand for detached housing continues to rise

The detached housing market continues to lead the way in Calgary's slow but steady recovery from a two-year recession. It is the fourth consecutive month of price increases in this segment of the market.

For the first time since June 2015, prices for detached homes did not decline on a year-over-year basis. Unadjusted detached benchmark prices reached $509,000 in May – one per cent higher than last month and levels recorded last year.

Detached sales improved across all price ranges and represented 65 per cent of all Calgary sales in May, the highest level since 2012. The largest detached sales growth occurred in the $600,000 - $999,999 range.

The number of Albertans spending money on renovations for their existing homes and recreational properties is on the rise.

According to Statistics Canada, investment in home renovations in the first quarter of 2017 hit a record high of $1.78 billion. A release from ATB Financial's Economics and Research Team says this is close to double the spending a decade ago.

Todd Hirsch, chief economist with ATB Financial, says he was surprised by the data for the first three months of this year.

"The increase that we saw in late 2016 and the first quarter of this year can be attributed to the rebuild in Fort McMurray (from last year's wildfires) because not every house was destroyed, which we tend to focus on." he said. "There were also many, many homes that needed to be renovated."

Higgy's Bluff project brings Bankview residents together

A chance discovery of a vacant lot in Bankview has led to plans for the creation of a temporary community park.

Local resident Chad Peters had noticed an empty residential lot at the corner of 14th Street and 25th Avenue S.W. during his walks and wondered who owned it and what it was being used for.

Peters says with the help of the Bankview Community Association, the property owner was contacted with a proposal to turn the lot into a new community space, subject to that use ending once the lot was scheduled for development.

Sikome Aquatic Facility buoyed by upgrades

While Alberta is landlocked, and most of Calgary's manmade lakes are private, Calgarians still like to spend a warm, summer day at the beach every now and then. Thankfully, there's still one public body of water within the city where people can go for a swim or throw down a towel to catch some rays.

Nestled in Fish Creek Provincial Park, the Sikome Aquatic Facility has been one of Calgary's most popular summer attractions since it opened in 1978.

The facility consists of an open-air swimming lake surrounded by a beach, lawn, children's playground and change rooms. It currently draws an estimated 200,000 visitors over its three-month season and up to 15,000 per day on weekends. While those are impressive numbers, Sikome's location in southeast Calgary is in one of the fastest growing sections of the city amd means traffic should continue to rise.

In part to accommodate the growing crowds, the facility recently underwent some upgrades.

Amy Shafer found her own private oasis in Watermark at Bearspaw

Amy Shafer grew up on a farm, so when it came to building her dream home, being immersed in nature on the doorstep of wide-open park space was a top priority. She and her husband, and their three children, had been living in Valley Ridge, but just didn't feel connected. Their search for the perfect lot brought them to Watermark in Bearspaw, where they purchased a 1.33-acre home site that backs on to an Aspen grove, a freshwater pond and walking trails. The community features 46 acres of parkland and 16 ponds, and brushes up against the Haskayne Legacy Park, with trails connecting to Calgary and Cochrane.

Marina and Gavin Reeves returned to the core to recapture their inner-city lifestyle

Marina and Gavin Reeves are busy, young professionals – she's an engineer and he's an accountant. Four years ago, they sold their condo in Connaught and moved to the northeast area of Highland Park, where they purchased a larger home, but they soon realized it wasn't the lifestyle fit that they were looking for. The couple ended up coming full-circle, as their lifestyle epiphany spurred a search for a townhome in the city's core. They wanted a home with outdoor space for their two dogs that was also close to transit, coffee shops and the inner-city action. Plus, it had to be big enough to grow into, as the couple plans to start a family in the near future. They found what they were looking for at Grosvenor Americas' Avenue project, located in Calgary's Downtown West End.

Southwest ring road is poised to usher in new era of growth in Calgary's south end

It's been a long time coming, but the southwest section of Calgary's ring road is finally being built, and the city's developer community is among those most thrilled to see construction going ahead.

"It's really going to open up growth in the area, and provide not just opportunities for new communities, but also existing ones," said Steve LePan, director of sales and marketing with Anthem United.

"We're certainly happy to see it moving forward, because it would have had a negative impact (on our development in the area) if it had not been approved."

Extensive system of dog parks makes Calgary a great place to be a canine

If someone told you that Calgary has more than 1,600 football fields worth of space dedicated to man's best friend, you might not believe them. But it's true – according to Todd Reichardt, manager of parks for the City of Calgary's centre city division, almost 20 per cent of Calgary's land inventory is allocated to off-leash dog parks.

"We have a real affinity for dog parks here in the city," said Reichardt. "We have over 150 off-leash sites. Compared with other [North American] cities of similar size, no one else even comes close."

That staggering statistic speaks volumes about communities around Calgary and their love for green spaces. City officials don't merely sprinkle off-leash areas around on a
whim – they're created once community demand reaches a certain level.

Mix of young and old call Calgary's established lake communities home

When D'Arcy Duquette and his family moved to Calgary from Montreal, a lake in their new community was a must-have for his son and daughter.

"I moved them from a home where we had a big in-ground pool in the backyard and were surrounded by lakes," said the 60-year-old transportation industry retiree. "They were spoiled."

After moving into McKenzie Lake, with its 17.5-hectare man-made lake, Duquette's children happily spent summers "in their bathing suits."

McKenzie Lake is one of the older lake communities in Calgary, established in the late 1980s. Like the other more mature lake communities in Calgary, including Lake Bonavista (the first man-made lake in Canada, completed in 1968), Midnapore, Chaparral, Sundance, McKenzie Lake, Arbour Lake and Coral Springs, the majority of homes in McKenzie Lake are single-family and the resale market is the only option for prospective buyers.