Bertie Wooster
New Member
Owners are very much leaning into the architectural value of these buildings in the conversions.
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Office Space Conversion
- Thread starter Zoom
- Start date
UrbanWarrior
Senior Member
A bit underwhelmed by the numbers to be honest, less than 1500 units over quite a long period, spread over a fairly large area. It’s a start at least, a good start.
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
For $100.275 Million municipal investment dollars you get 1437 homes. That's $69780.79 per home. I don't actually think that's a bad investment. It keeps the city away from being a developer while also delivering some sub-market housing (granted not all).
MichaelS
Senior Member
Are they going to be sub market? Is that a condition of the city funding? I am not sure what criteria there is to qualify for this grant.
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
In the individual project description, one mentions: "Almost half of the homes will be offered at below market rental rates". So definitely not all but some... One item that kind of steals some vibrancy from the street... This one also includes retail space on the second floor for the +15 (80's/90's flashback). Can't win them all. Bit sad the city is subsidizing market housing but eyes and feet on the street I guess.
CBBarnett
Senior Member
Of the projects announced so far I think many are sub-market, but also many are larger 2 and 3 bedroom family sized units as well. So it's not just a subsidy to increase the supply, it's a subsidy to change the unit mix too. Combined with the reduced permit times and process incentives I think that's why we are seeing such traction.
Overall though, the less directly-measurable benefits in downtown revitalization and a growing city centre population is the largest benefit. 1,500 new units is not immaterial - downtown only has about 10,000 units today, most of them small studio, 1 or 2 bedroom. So far, that's likely 2,000 - 4,000 new people in the core, supporting local businesses, all concentrated within a few blocks. Small local businesses get more customers, and every future resident lives in the most accessible location in the city (and therefore with minimal transportation costs). It's a big public and personal financially sustainability benefit packing as many people downtown as possible.
The other piece about subsidies that should be considered is would the market have created the units, in downtown, on their own? In many situations I think developers do - although of course, exclusively at market rents. But in downtown's case I am not sure they would have - commercial landlords seemed perfectly happy sitting on empty decaying obsolete office blocks for a decade or more. We even had the Stephen Ave proposal that wanted another office building despite 35% vacancy rates for nearly a decade. I haven't seen much evidence that these asset owners were doing much other than waiting for a magically rebounding office environment that could absorb 12M+ square feet of empty office space.
Perhaps triggering the snowball to roll down hill with the incentive program for conversion opened up some eyes on what is possible for these tired assets that wasn't seen as practical before. Unlike many poorly configured incentives, the conversion ones triggered a significant response so they had an impact.
Article below sums it up well - comparing Calgary's approach v. Vancouver's, dealing with very different office supply and downtown vacancy stories.
Calgary and Vancouver are reshaping empty office spaces in very different ways
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/british-columbia/article-calgary-vancouver-office-spaces/
I'm not a fan of governments subsidizing market housing, but I'm fine with it in this case due to its location. It's a special use case and as @CBBarnett mentioned, if it weren't for subsidies these buildings wouldn't get converted. It's a one time cost to get housing into an area that would not likely ever get housing.
Unfortunately we've seen that the landlords are okay to sit on the properties even when they're empty. Some of the buildings have been empty for 7-8 years, and still no change from the landlords. Some day the buildings might get to a low enough value that the landlord finally dumps them for next to nothing, but that could be 20 or 30 years from now.
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
With this subsidy, would that not in itself affect the property value. Because it gives the owner another avenue outside of office space, mothball, demo. I don't know the hard numbers but demo must cost less than converting?
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Chowda7
Active Member
From cubicles to condos: City of Calgary to convert 5 office buildings into inner-city apartments
The City of Calgary has approved five new projects that will actually convert old office spaces into brand new homes.
curiocity.com
Zoom
Active Member
I hope the Fina building doesn't get covered up with that cheap composite paneling they're putting on everything these days.Owners are very much leaning into the architectural value of these buildings in the conversions.
CT (Chinese_T)
Active Member
Fina Rendering
Patrick.1980
Active Member
^^^I like it. They're keeping the original look.
haltcatchfire
Senior Member
Finally a win!
Calgcouver
Active Member
Hell yes, Fina and Taylor Buildings were the buildings I most wanted to see conversions on. Glad they are keeping the original look on both. Really happy these are being converted.
Next on my most wanted list would the building Barcelona Tavern is in, Elveden Centre, the Lougheed Building, Grain Exchange, Lammles building on 8th, The Telephone Building, the Lorraine, 319-327 10 Ave SW, 322 & 326 11 Ave SW, 630 8 Ave SW, Western Union Building,134 11 Ave SE, 402 11 Ave SE, St Regis Hotel, and Ribtor East and west Buildings.
Next on my most wanted list would the building Barcelona Tavern is in, Elveden Centre, the Lougheed Building, Grain Exchange, Lammles building on 8th, The Telephone Building, the Lorraine, 319-327 10 Ave SW, 322 & 326 11 Ave SW, 630 8 Ave SW, Western Union Building,134 11 Ave SE, 402 11 Ave SE, St Regis Hotel, and Ribtor East and west Buildings.