Downtown Calgary has the hottest office market in North American. At 2.1% it has the lowest vacancy rate in North America second in the world only to Tokyo's which is less than 2%. A recent report in the Calgary Herald described office rents that have climbed from $20 to $40 per square foot for prime locations in less than two years. Calgary is also second to Toronto for the number of head offices in Canada. With a booming energy sector that is not about to chill, we can expect downtown Calgary to remain a hot bed of commercial real estate for some time.
Adding to the excitement in Calgary is a backlog of new office towers either under construction or proposed. Calgary's downtown core currently has about 32 million square feet of office space (of which about seven million square feet is AA class). There are five buildings currently under construction with about 2,900,000 square feet of office space all due for completion in 2007. There is an addition 4 million square feet of office space proposed for the downtown including a 2 million square foot head office for Encana that is rumoured will become the city's tallest building.
There are reports that the office vacancy rate may fall below 2% in 2006 and still not satisfy a pent up demand for downtown space. This will provide the incentive for owners of proposed office projects to get them in the ground.
To keep track of the booming downtown Calgary market, learn about the dizzying array of new office towers and the latest leasing deals, RENX is providing a series of stories. Initially RENX will publish an article about each of the five developments currently under construction. A summary of proposed office towers will follow then updates as the Calgary downtown market changes.
In the Friday daily edition and the Monday weekly edition RENX will published a story about Centrium Place, the first in the series about new office towers. The other buildings that will be profiled in the series are shown the table below. This table will be available with each of the articles we publish.
Office buildings under construction in the downtown Calgary market February 9, 2006
| Building | Managment – Owner |
1,000's Sq. Ft. |
Str | Completion Date |
|
Trident Tower Homburg Second Tower |
Homburg Invest |
220 375 |
10 20 |
Jan 2007 TBD |
| Centrium Place | Tonko Realty Advisors for Canadian Pension Fund |
225 | 15 | Mar 2007 |
| OPUS 8 | Opus Building Corp. | 225 | 12 | Mar 2007 |
| Livingston Place – South Tower Livingston Place – North Tower |
Bentall Real Estate Services for Canadian Pension Fund |
420 420 |
21 21 |
Spring 2007 Fall 2007 |
| Calgary Courts – South Tower Calgary Courts – North Tower |
Government of Alberta PPP – GWL Realty Advisors Inc. |
500 500 |
20 24 |
Summer 2007 Summer 2007 |
