Brad Field is a Calgary success story. He moved to Calgary as a child and realized early the opportunity this city offers. He grew up in the S.E. Calgary area of Bonavista, not far from one of his favourite places in Calgary - Fish Creek Park. He met his wife Sheryl in 10th grade at E.P. Scarlett High School. They married in 1988 and raised their three children here, Haley, Kyle and Mitch. A big hockey fan, Brad was - in younger years - a Junior A hockey referee - not bad experience for a Mayor to have! Brad is a 2004 graduate of the MIT Entrepreneurial Master’s Program, and was nominated in 2008 as a “Leader of Tomorrow” by Business in Calgary Magazine. Enjoying the outdoors and physical recreation, Brad has hiked with his son to the Everest base camp, and also ran the route of the original Greek marathon. Now that the kids are grown, Brad and Sheryl live in the East Village.
Reach out to Brad Field through the links below.
Website: votebradfield.ca
Email: info@brad-field.ca
Hey everyone. My name is Brian Howard. I'm a Calgary realtor who has sold an average of a house a week since moving to this great city in 2003. And this is Calgary living real estate and lifestyle. I'm interviewing Calgary's top performers as it relates to living and lifestyle in our great city. Some of the podcasts will be real estate decisions specific, but most will be about life in Calgary.
And why we choose to live here or at least why you should visit. Thanks for tuning it.
Well, good morning folks. I am. This is Calgary living real estate and lifestyle. I'm your host, Brian Howard and I have on the call today, Mr. Bradfield Merrill candidate, Brad, welcome to the show and thank you for wanting to be our next leader in Calgary. Thanks for having me, Brian, super excited to be here.
Yeah. Really looking forward to the upcoming lecture. Oh, that's easy. It's so tell me Brad. You the collection is, I guess probably what you probably count the [00:01:00] days. It must be 12 days, 10 days, 10, 10 plus or minus? Yeah, a week and a half. Yep. And you've been on the campaign trail for what? Six months or something.
Well, actually, I've been on it for three and a half years. I committed to running in 2021, you know, virtually the day after the last civic election in 2017. So yeah, it's been, it's been a long run, but yeah, super busy, obviously in 2021, we started to ramp up early in 21. So, wow. Now what motivated you to decide the day after the last election to to jump into the, into this?
Tell us about. Yeah. I mean, for me again, I've been in Calgary 50 years. So my passion for Calgary runs deep and you know, I've been a vendor with the city of Calgary for 25 years. So I worked well with a city administration and 16,000 employees. But I was approached about five years ago asking me if I was interested in running for public office.
And at that time, I'd never even considered it. It wasn't something that was on my radar. And so I [00:02:00] declined at that time, but I thought, you know, I left that kind of interaction with what is public office, you know, what's it entail. And I sued, figured out it, what it's, what is what I've been doing all my life, you know, building relationships, teamwork, collaborating, you know, solving issues and so forth.
So. I start to inject myself into the conversation by showing up at council meetings and sitting in the audience and watching watching the good, the bad and the ugly go on in council. And soon realized there was an opening for someone like me to bring my skillset to the city of Calgary. And so post 2017 election, when mayor Nenshi was reelected I jumped at the opportunity.
So super excited about. Well, w we, we thank you for your interest. And so it sounds like you had a career working for the Calgary, a city as a vendor. It sounds like you've never served on political you know, a political party before you're retired from the city. Is that right? No. So I I'm a contractor to the, so I supply goods and services as a private [00:03:00] sector company.
But you know, I've been in business in different parts of the world. Everything from healthcare to fire suppression, to heavy equipment repair to real estate in different countries around the world. So I've worked with federal state provincial, municipal. Governments around the world. So very well-versed in interacting at the, at the government level.
But yeah, no, it's you know, it's been 25 years working alongside the city of COVID. They're a small piece of a lot of the work I do in business, in different countries. So I knew that too, I'm coming from the business background. So tell me a little bit about your kalbi living experience and your life here.
How long have you lived in calc? Yeah. So 50 years I wasn't born here, but I was I, I jokingly say I moved here when I was two and brought my parents with me. And so I grew up in south Calgary. I tell the story back when Anderson road was literally the edge of the earth from from a child's perspective, then we used to hop on our bikes and cut through fish Creek park and do road trips to midnight four, because minibar used to be an out of town.
Outside of the jurisdiction. So yeah, [00:04:00] super super great lifestyle growing up in south Calgary. And I married my high school sweetheart here in Calgary and we went on to raise three wonderful kids, Mitch, Kyle, and Haley. And yeah, they've all chosen their own journey in life, which is super exciting as a parent and as a father to see see what they're doing in their lives.
So, yeah. I'm curious you came 50 years ago and brought your parents with you. Did you guys come from? I came from the east coast prince Edward island in 2003 myself. But where did you come from your family originally and what brought your family to calc? Yeah, west coast. So I was born on Vancouver island the big town of Campbell river and yeah, my parents my understanding of the story was, is that they had lived on the island for a while and felt they needed a change and they did the literal.
Throw the dart at the, at the map and Calgary. It was yet they wanted to be in Western Canada and Calgary was a place of opportunity and here's where they settled. So, yeah. Thank you for the choice that they made to come to Calgary. It's a, it's given me so much opportunity. [00:05:00] And when you mentioned that you moved, you lived in south Calgary.
So there's this community in the inner city of Calgary called self Calgary. And then there's south Calgary maybe 50 years ago, which would, would have been represented by fish Creek. And what part of cell Calgary did you guys land it? Yeah, so we ended up, I think our first house here was bond Vista was newly built in the mid to late sixties.
And yeah, all, all of my Calgary living up until late until I moved into the downtown core has been in south Calgary. Well, are you actually living in the down, down downtown Cornell? Is that what. Yeah, I'm living in east village just right across the street from the old Simmons building. Huh? So you're in a condo.
And how are you enjoying that? Are you empty nesters? You and your wife? I assume so. Yeah. You know, it's, it's funny because you know, when you grow up with land and a backyard and all those things moving into a condo there, excuse me, is a, is a different thing. And I didn't know if. If I was going to like it or not, but I enjoy living in the downtown core and walking down the river pathways.
[00:06:00] And so, yeah, it's, it's a change it's different. But super enjoyable, you know, the walkability and so forth is, is fantastic. So with your current, like outlook in life right now and what you're buying for and working hard for, because of your, you know, your motivation and interest and enthusiasm. I mean, you have to be hip and cool, what's it like living in east village at, you know, our age?
Like isn't it, what's the average demographic there? Is it more like early thirties or what have you, any comments on that? Yeah, obviously that a 20 to 30 a year of age is right in there, but we see all, all demographics right up to seniors. And I love walking the river pathways, you know, or riding an east scooter, I guess that's the cool part.
We'll hop on a new scooter, but for me, it's, it's always, I've always made the comment. If you just go for a walk by yourself. And just listen. It's amazing to me, how many different languages and I don't speak any other languages, so I'm not, but it's just amazing. The different dialects and different languages is if, if you just walk the river pathways and [00:07:00] listen, that's really cool.
And interesting, nice breath. Tell me a little bit about your w what strikes you about Calgary. I mean, you're obviously have a passion for it leaving the city. What are some of the things that strike you about. Well, I mean, where we're located you know, I think, you know, as long-time Calgarians, we get w maybe we get a little complacent where we take for granted where we live, you know, in Western Canada at the foot of the Rocky mountains, of course, that's super nice.
I've never, you know, I've been lucky enough to travel the world sunrises and sunsets in, in Western, Western Canada, Southern Alberta. Are to die for, and I've seen lots of around the world. And then as a, as a city the people, the opportunity I've never had so much opportunity in, in one place. I've been able to build businesses in different countries around the world and, but Calgary is my home.
And we do it really well here in Calgary and, and the people are just great. You know, our single greatest asset here in the city of recovery is its people. Is there anything you don't like about. Oh, you know, [00:08:00] not much, you know what there's, you know, there's little things that, you know, as a, as a city, as a community that we need to do better you know, right now we're struggling around security and public safety in certain areas of town and downtown and so forth.
But, you know, as a whole, generally speaking. I've got nothing bad to say about Covey. It's just a fantastic city. We've gone through tough times here. We're in the middle of tough times. But we'll come out of this stronger than ever. So no, Calgary's a very resilient and yeah, Calgary's got everything you can possible.
I'm wondering, could you tell us a little bit about your interest in real estate and maybe I mean, and relating it to being the leader of our city in terms of a Merrill perspective. Can you share a little bit about that? Yeah, for sure. I I started real estate very early. I bought my first real estate here in Calgary and south Calgary as a team.
I was renting an apartment just out of high school and paying a significant amount of money for the that time. I, you know, I, I was working hard after school and weekends, so I had the money and so forth, but was paying $650 a month rent in the mid eighties, [00:09:00] which was a lot of money back then.
And I was a little bit of a car, not tenant. So I had a couple, a couple of cars sitting around and I sold one of my cars for it now. And I bought my house, my first house and my mortgage payment was $13 more than my rent payment was. And I never looked back, you know, I bought and sold houses for years until my wife Cheryl said enough.
I mean, she was getting tired of moving every year as I would fix up and flip houses all for. So and then yeah, went on to buy. I had some rental properties, of course, and I own commercial real estate here in Calgary. And you know, I guess in relation to you know, rang for mayor leadership you know, between private or residential and non-residential park property taxes here in the city at Gary, it's getting really painful.
My property taxes, my commercial property taxes have gone. 50% in the last four years. So, you know, that's the kind of stuff that has great impact on small businesses here in the city of Calgary, as well as residents. And we got to look at it differently. We got to figure out a different way of budgeting.
That's why I'm putting forward priority [00:10:00] based budgeting, which is a different way of looking at how we spend citizens money here in the city of Gallup. And then, cause we can't keep going back to residents and non non-residential property tax owners for, for more money because we got to stop the bleeding.
We can't afford to do it. It's over it's overburdening the tax base and that we've got to figure out a better way, but I've got a plan in place. So very good. Well, that's that's yeah, that's interesting. When I moved to Calgary originally for the for the economy and the Alberta advantage and and the schools for my kids and It seems a little bit like.
The Alberta vantage is not really as it used to be. And you know, the economy is a little bit tough and my kids have both moved to Vancouver island, so I'm staying for the mountains, but you know, and it's interesting. I invested quite heavily in real estate myself when I, and I used to talk about how cheap taxes were, and it's certainly not the case anymore.
And it seems like it, it probably won't be any way. And the commercial taxes, especially I. Yeah. Yeah. There's no question. It just, you know, the, the challenges [00:11:00] is that, you know, the narrative coming from the city is all we have, you know low property taxes compared to, but I don't, it's not about being compared to it's what's relevant in our jurisdiction.
And so for me they keep on talking, you know, the two narratives coming out of city hall is, is either raise taxes or cut services. And that's as deep as they think. And I think we have to look at it differently, how we spend in the city of Calgary and make sure that we're using taxpayers' dollars as wisely as.
Brad, I, when I was sort of proposing that I would interview some mural candidates for, for my show. I asked some of my young, my, my friends, my social media friends, more than anyone like what, some of the questions they might ask. And one of my favorite ones and at the top of my list here is is this one and it came from a diesel hippie and on Instagram.
And he, that his question was. Well, do you have any plans to ask the stupid international air projects and frivolous spending thereof? We absolutely have more than enough talented local artists, many of whom do not receive enough support to contracts. And those international projects were an insult to our time, [00:12:00] to us as taxpayers and a slap in the face to local artists.
And then he said, that's my ranch. Any, any comments on his rant? And I think he was referring a little bit to well that that oh, I keep forgetting the name, the circle way up there by the airport. Yes, I don't, I, I don't know if there's actually a name for it. I mean, if there is, it's never recently, but I, the ring of waste, I've heard the blue ring, the ring to nowhere, you know, so yeah.
There's no question. We can look at things differently. Again, I'm not an art critic and so I'll never decide what is art and what isn't art. But I think the general concern is, is. Where we're spending the Miami in to your caller's point is, you know, why do we continue to support out of town artists or out of country artists?
Right. We've got a great talent pool right here in the city of Calgary. And then two, what are we, what are we spending? Or what, how are, how much are we paying for this art? And again, it's not about the art. I won't decide whether it's. What we're spending for it and Antonia I'm in the metal business, fabricating business construction [00:13:00] business in a lot of ways.
And I look at the, I believe the half a million dollar price tag for that blue ring. It's. Like it is absolutely ridiculous what we pay for that there isn't $20,000 in material and I'll give you another 50 to a hundred thousand dollars in in installation charges. And that puts us at a hundred to, let's say 150,000.
We paid 500,000 for you know, you, you, you, you know, so, and then the towers, the boat towers out on both trail same thing. Again, I'm not dictating whether it's art or. But you know, we paid, I think, close to a half, a million dollars, right there isn't $15,000 worth of material there. Now I'll give you another 50 being very generous for installation.
We paid a half a million, so you know, the pricing around this is ridiculous. And then the third thing is where's it. Both of those pieces of art are located on, on freeways where no one can enjoy it at a hundred kilometers an hour. You can't safely pull over and take a photo. So if, even if they're wonderful [00:14:00] pieces of art that tourists are in town here, and they want to get some photo ops, they can't.
So they're inaccessible. So let's look at what we're paying for them, where they're located and let's try and keep it local. We have to make better efforts about keeping our money in the local economy. What's your stance a little bit. I mean, you're living in the inner city. What's, what's your thoughts on, and you talked a little bit about safety around certain area quadrants over city, possibly.
What are your thoughts on vitalized vitalization of our urban core? That seems to be a question or a concern. Have you heard that much in your mirror campaign? Are people concerned about that or. Yeah, no. Yeah, no question. That's, you know, it's, it's a hot topic right now. And again, with downtown being gutted, you know, I think 35, 40% vacancy rate, they, I think it's officially around 30, but realistically it's probably 35, 40% vacancy rate.
There's no question. The downtown core has been hollowed out but even pre pre economic downturn. Downtown core was not a place you wanted to be after five o'clock. It was [00:15:00] dead, right? It was, it was, you know, shuttered up at five o'clock after everybody went home and, and other than the odd person going out for dinner with with their spouse, not much was going on downtown.
So if we're going to take this opportunity to revitalize downtown, let's rethink it, how we're doing it. I'm all about the next generation for me. When I talked to the next generation, it's about, they want to live, work and play educate in the downtown. That's that's where they want to be. So if we're going to build for the future, let's talk to the future stakeholders.
So let's talk about repopulating downtown core with that next generation. Let's get post-secondary institutions into the downtown core. Let's create a brewery row in music mile. You know, we've got this wonderful microbrewery industry here in the city of Calgary. That world wins a worldwide.
Awards for a beer and so forth. Why aren't we celebrating that music model? We've got the national music center. It's an iconic building. We're now the home of the Canadian country music hall of fame. Let's build on that. So let's create that vibrant downtown where, where people want to be after dark as well.[00:16:00]
During work hours, but after dark. So I have this ongoing discussion with that next generation of boat. Can you imagine living in affordable housing in the downtown court, in one of those office buildings that's been retrofitted or converted and waking up in the morning, having a cup of. Going to class, you know, going up the elevator, a couple, a couple of floors going to class, cause there's a post-secondary institution and then going for lunch and then going up another elevator ride to the 30th floor and doing your internship or your co-op programs on the.
You know, that's the kind of stuff that is exciting to hear from that next generation. I think it's doable. So you know, fundamentals public safety and security. Let's talk about accessible transit and make sure that we populate that down downtown core with that next generation. I love it. And I just want to add to it.
And then that student, you know, a walk meeting his club down at the river for a kayak paddle or fly fishing class or bike ride or run along the pathway system. Awesome. Can you just touch a little bit on and I want to be conscious of our time, Brad, [00:17:00] I to close this up fairly quickly because of your.
Vanessa of course, and listeners times. What about the transportation? I mean, the, the, the LRT, can you talk to us a little bit that as well as bike lanes, what are you, I mean, I'm sure that's come up a lot in your, you know, in your, in your, in your, in your door knocking or whatever you're doing and hitting the campaign trail thoughts on know, can you share with us your thoughts on those two?
Yeah, quick, one of the bike lanes. I think we we built some bike lanes the public called for some bike lanes. We've done a fantastic job. There's been some challenges about implementation and making sure that they're safe. But until there's a call for more bike lanes, I don't think we need to build any more bike lanes we've built out when the public demands or shows the need for more bike lanes.
We'll we'll, we'll discuss it then. Greenline, public transportation. If we're going to build a city for the future, we have to have world-class transportation. So Greenlight is a part of that discussion, a little disappointed that it's not shovels in the ground yet. We need to make sure that we're reaching as many Calgarians as possible.
Let's get the Southeast lake built. Let's get north of the [00:18:00] river before. The only way we're going to do that though, is stop talking about tumbling under downtown Calgary. I think that's a massive mistake from a budgetary standpoint, a plus downtown disruption while we're building it. 2 billion of the $5.5 billion budget is based on downtown tunneling.
So let's skip that part of it. Let's make sure we get north of the river where residents need it more now than ever. And let's make sure we're talking about connecting our international airport to downtown Calgary, and then to expand on that, make sure we have that continued private sector discussion, both connecting.
Why do I see through downtown out to bath? That is an absolute game changer for the city of Calgary and Southern Alberta. And that's, what's going to keep people here in the city of Calgary and generate economic. Recovery as well as social aspects as well. Great, Brett, thanks for sharing your higher view.
Really appreciate it. You're, you've just been elected by the people of Calgary. They want you as their mayor. It's the first day in office. What do you do? Who are some of your first meetings? You know, with council, of course, we're going to have a new council at least nine new council members, [00:19:00] which is super exciting.
So first of all, start building relationships with my fellow council members and then start having discussions with city administration and make sure that we're going to change the culture and how we operate city and city hall. Make sure that we start empowering our 16,000 employees and turn that culture around.
So set the tone very early for respect and decorum and how we interact with. Sounds like a great first day on the job. Congratulations. Thank you so much. Tell them Brett, how can listeners reach out? How can they help? How can they support you in these last days on the on the campaign trail? What can we do?
Yeah. While volt bradfield.ca is my website. Of course you can go online. You can order a lawn sign. You can donate campaigns are expensive, you can volunteer but more importantly than anything is spreading. Right again, we're coming in from the outside. It's basically boiling down to me against three council current council members and in name recognition is baked.
Right? So spread the word. If you're, if you like what you hear spread the word and donate order a lawn sign, [00:20:00] all that stuff. We got 10 days left and then just make sure whether or not you're supporting me or not make sure you get out and vote, exercise your democratic rights. Right. Then thanks very much for being on the show.
Thanks very much for having me, Brian.