Five More Downtown Calgary Office Conversions to Complete in 2025: Official

Natalie Marchut, manager of development and strategy with the downtown strategy team, told CBC that the conversions will further reduce downtown office vacancy. The projects are being partially funded through the city’s downtown office-conversion program, which received a new funding injection in 2024 after its budget was exhausted.

The program was paused for more than a year before receiving the $52.5-million funding injection. Most of the projects convert office buildings to multi-residential rental properties. But some projects have also converted offices to hotels and other uses.

“We have already 12 buildings that have been approved to receive funding that are actively converting their space out of office to, again, primarily residential use,” Marchut told CBC.

Marchut made the comments in the wake of a Altus Group figures that show Calgary’s downtown office vacancy is still the highest in the country.

Ray Wong, an Altus vice-president, told CBC that third-quarter 2024 data, the most recently available, showed the city’s downtown office vacancy was 23.3% but down from the first quarter of 2023, when it hit 25%.

Calgary’s office is still recovering from a severe downturn in the global oil and gas market, the after-effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors, including the hybrid-work movement.

Wong told CBC that Calgary has made good progress on driving vacancy down.

“Part of that progress is, as you know, we’ve had a steady increase in [Calgary’s] population growth based on housing affordability… So it’s causing [the Calgary] office availability rate to actually drop in comparison to some of the other markets across Canada,” Wong told CBC.

The City of Calgary also has a downtown office-building-demolition program that has helped to offset vacancy in the sector as new projects involving other use are erected. The demolition program is intended for office properties are not conducive to conversions.

Pictured: Cornerstone project, the first former office building converted to multi-residential use under the City of Calgary’s downtown incentives funding program. The photo on the left show the property in its new multi-residential form. The right side displays the property’s former office-building form.