Calgary's long-awaited west LRT line will transform the neighbourhoods that border its eight-kilometre stretch – and mostly for the better, city officials say.

Scheduled to open in early 2013 after first being approved in 1988, the $1.4 billion project will bring LRT service to an area of the city expected to grow from its current population of 105,000 to approximately 120,000 in the next 20 years.

In the midst of Historic Calgary Week (July 27 – Aug. 6) , one of the city's most influential buildings as far as the oil industry, and one of the most memorable for theatregoers, announced it is shutting its doors for good.

"The Uptown has made the business decision to cease operations of the Uptown Stage and Screen and Marquee Room and is vacating the Barron Building," said The Uptown Stage and Screen on their Facebook page Aug. 1.

While community gardens may seem a rather new trend in the scope of things, they've actually been around Calgary for almost 100 years.

Years ago the City Planning Commission came up with an initiative called the Calgary Vacant Lots Garden Club in 1914. According to a history prepared by Carole Stokes, an archivist with the City of Calgary Archives, the club's executive recognized the cultivation of Calgary's vacant lots would benefit the city's poorer families who could grow and harvest their own produce at a lesser cost.

Alberta has been a veritable hot spot of new residents lately with its strong economy and low unemployment rate.

"There's a reason why Calgary's CTrain has been feeling more congested lately; people have been flocking to Alberta," said ATB Financial economist Will Van't Veld.

Calgary's Avenue Magazine recently released its third compilation of Calgary's Best Neighbourhoods with the northwest community of Varsity taking the number one spot.

The magazine surveys its readers, asking them to share what is most important in a neighbourhood that makes it's residents want to remain living there.

When it comes to purchasing a first home, buyers have regrets – mostly that they took so long to do it.

In that sense, Bryan Backman- Beharry is your typical homebuyer. The 32-year-old Calgarian recently purchased his first home, a three-bedroom bungalow in the southwest community of Killarney, after renting a condominium in the downtown core.