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Office Space Conversion

Toma said:
Agree, it is not cheap to covert them. Immigrants are still coming, so all condos will be filled.
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I don't think immigrants to Canada are moving into downtown rental accommodations at least not in great numbers. One... rent is more expensive than in the suburbs. Two... most immigrants will move to communities where there is already family living or people from the same country.
 
JonnyCanuck said:
I don't think immigrants to Canada are moving into downtown rental accommodations at least not in great numbers. One... rent is more expensive than in the suburbs. Two... most immigrants will move to communities where there is already family living or people from the same country.
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Filtering exists, so yeah, more people = more units filled.
 
Depends which type of immigrants. Plenty of high-rise districts in Vancouver and Toronto have huge immigrant populations. Check out Yonge Street in North York, for example. Lots of students here on visas want to rent apartments where they're close to 24-hour amenities as well as mass transit connecting them to universities and colleges.
 
JonnyCanuck said:
I don't think immigrants to Canada are moving into downtown rental accommodations at least not in great numbers. One... rent is more expensive than in the suburbs. Two... most immigrants will move to communities where there is already family living or people from the same country.
Click to expand...
Generally speaking, yes, but there are a fair number of immigrants who live in downtown apartments. From what I've seen it's mostly older stock buildings, but still they are helping fill the downtown rental market.
 
It is going to take a long long time to populate the core with residents particularly when there is so much choice on the fringes of downtown ... Beltline, East Village, West Village, Kensington etc. The Mon-Fri working crowd in the core is a fraction of what it was 5 years ago. It is not just the jobs permanently lost in O&G but now people working from home during the pandemic who used to work downtown. It remains to be seen what percentage of 'work from home' are permanent. That is something every company located downtown is working through right now.. All I know is that the net impact of all this has had a devastating impact on retail and commercial businesses. Does anyone really know if and when business travel, which is also critical to core business, will return to normal? Some are predicting that it never will. The pandemic has changed the need for 'face to face' business contact.
Seeing all this, it makes it difficult to attract new business when the customer base is not there. Similarly, why would you decide to live in the core when there a are few amenities and those that are there, are mostly open Mon-Fri, 9-5 only.
 
I like some of the ideas that were mentioned in the article. Don't know if they're feasible or not - vertical greenhouses for example - but it's nice to see ideas outside of the box. Affordable housing is something that might work also. It mentioned Sait taking over some space. Gotta keep these things coming.
 
Posted in a few other threads, but here is the official news release from the City of the first 3 projects from the City's incentive program:
newsroom.calgary.ca

City announces first three downtown office-to-residential conversion projects approved for funding

The City of Calgary is pleased to announce the first three successful applicants to the Downtown Calgary Development Incentive Program. These three projects will infuse life into largely empty or underutilized office buildings by converting empty office space to new residential units. It’s one...
newsroom.calgary.ca newsroom.calgary.ca
 
And the developer's website for the 909-5th Ave SW project is here:

Current Projects – Peoplefirst

people-1st.ca people-1st.ca
Before:
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After:
1651080398786.png
 
That article from the city said there's two more applications nearing completion and others in the pipeline. With all these, those in the works and those already completed that'll work out to probably close to 10 office to residential conversions since the crash. It's nothing crazy, but that's the equivalent of 10 new residential towers being built. If these keep up I suspect it could actually have a pretty positive impact in the long run.
 
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