Calgary Council: Eviction Crisis as Angel's Café Faces Demolition

CALGARY — Angel's Café has 30 days to vanish. After nearly three decades pouring coffee in Edworthy Park, owner Cathy Jacobs just got her eviction notice from the City of Calgary. The reason? Her million-dollar building is sitting on ground zero for the city's desperate race to fix the water pipes that nearly broke Calgary last summer.

The café at 4105 Montgomery View NW has to be gone by Thursday, January 22, 2026. City Hall needs the land as a staging area for the accelerated Bearspaw South feeder main replacement—the $1.2 billion emergency project born from June's catastrophic pipe failure. What was supposed to take four years is now crammed into one. December 2026 or bust.

Jacobs isn't going quietly. "Removal of my building is impossible," she said. "I have no place to put a building." She's staring down $500,000 in removal costs for a structure she just installed new in 2019, all while carrying significant debt. Then there's her 12 winter staff—the people who showed up when the park was empty and the bills still came due.

The Pipe That Broke the City

This mess traces back to June and July 2025, when the Bearspaw South Feeder Main blew and turned Calgary into a rationing zone. Weeks of severe water restrictions. A State of Local Emergency. The kind of crisis that exposes what happens when critical infrastructure decides it's done.

City Council responded in Q4 2025 by green-lighting the accelerated construction schedule, pulling funds from the Fiscal Stability Reserve and emergency money from the provincial government. The city's Parks department invoked a 30-day termination clause buried in Jacobs' land lease. Legal? Yes. Brutal? Also yes.

City Hall's Cold Math

Mayor Jeromy Farkas and Ward 7 Councillor Myke Atkinson both called the café an unfortunate "casualty" of preventing another citywide meltdown. Farkas was blunt: "There is no permanent fix to the Bearspaw feeder main." He framed the project as "a race against time."

Infrastructure Services General Manager Michael Thompson acknowledged "there will definitely be disruption" but insisted the city has to balance localized pain against keeping safe drinking water flowing to everyone. Atkinson pointed out that using micro-tunnelling instead of the originally considered "cut-and-cover" method is actually the less destructive option—though Angel's Café was probably doomed either way, sitting so close to the Shaganappi Pump Station.

As for compensation? There isn't one. No pre-set fund exists for business disruption. Any payout to Jacobs would require a separate council vote or a court fight. Atkinson's office promised to advocate for affected businesses but couldn't confirm whether compensation talks have even started.

What Happens Next

The replacement feeder main is supposed to be operational by December 2026. Whether Jacobs finds another location—city-owned or otherwise—remains an open question. So does whether her staff will still have jobs when the eviction deadline hits.

For now, the café that survived nearly 30 Calgary winters has one month left before the bulldozers need its spot more than the neighborhood needs its lattes.