EAP II 40 story tower gets go ahead :cool:

I never expected oil prices to rebound to almost pre-crash levels - so yes I was very wrong.

2012 announced and proposed office development in Calgary:

Eighth Avenue Place west tower - 40 floors
Centennial Place 3 - 25 floors - Oxford
City Centre 40 floors plus hotel residential tower - Cadillac Fairview
Bow 2
"Nexen 2" - 40 floors
Atco 3 - mid-rise
Strategic Mission - low rise now preparing to resume construction
Palliser Square - 2 at 25 floors
Quarry Park - low rise
Herald Square - 50 floors - Brookfield
Prism Place - mid-rise
Midtown Centron - mid-rise preparing to resume construction

I'm sure I've missed a few, and it would be great to add Imperial Oil to the list. They tore down their Calgary office building 20 years ago and the prime location on 4th St between 5th and 6th avenues has been a parking lot ever since.

Apparently there are a couple more in the works too. Calgary's office market continues to kick ass!

I wonder, is there anywhere in North America that sees as much construction in 2012, office construction that is. I'm guessing no.

I wish Toronto could be like Calgary in that regard ... i.e. completely centralized.
Though we've had a mini boom downtown in terms of office space it really pales in comparison with Calgary. Also given that Toronto had built so little space downtown the 10 years prior it speaks even more to Calgary's success office wise.

I guess the problem here the GTA on the whole is building a lot still, it's just spread out throughout the entire region.

You make it sound like we're dying here... :(

Toronto still has four office proposals in the 200 meter++++ range. Two of those are actively and on the go searching out tenants. (BAC-2, and Oxford-100-Adelaide). The other two are not active proposals at 154 Front Street West, 234 meters, and 45 Bay St at 244 meters.

Plus under-construction downtown we have two research towers

MARS - 24 Floors
Sick Kids Tower - 24 Floors

Plus 2 under construction office towers

Waterpark Place - 30 Floors
Bremner Tower - 30 Floors

Plus two office towers just completed

Telus House
18 York

And another 2 office towers completed in the past two years.

BAC - 1
RBC - Centre

Not to mention 4 Five Star Hotel towers that range in height from 204m to 277m. The fact that Oxford is moving ahead with two major office proposals shows that the Toronto office market is in good shape. It may be at the point of critical mass now where regardless of global financial situations the demand for new office space at a moderate pace will be the new norm in T.O. No booms like we had back in the 70's and 80's but at least one or two decent projects a year.

Toronto still looks great for 2012, even though they've already been white hot for the last few years.

Lots of good action for Calgary in the next two or three years. I thought it would be 5-10 years before a new office tower broke ground...I never would have imagined one starting before the Bow was even finished!
Same for residential towers. It looked like Calgary had overbuilt, but five new towers have have broken ground since the downturn.....six if you include an assisted living building.

Toronto and Calgary continue to kick ass!

Toronto's recent boom looks great in retrospect i.e. given the fact essentially no construction took place the 15 years prior or so (that's not exactly true...).

I'm not sure I'm ready to declare Toronto's future sound and secure.
To be clear, I'm solely referring to job growth, Toronto has an amazing downtown otherwise, and it gets better every year, on top of this we have the massive waterfront development that will only expand things. Clearly more and more people are living downtown ...


Having said that, the 905 is still adding a ton of office space each year, when throughout North America your seeing the opposite i.e. suburbs stagnating and core's improving (though not to the degree you do in Canada).

I guess that speeks wonders to our suburbs, or is it tax issues ? Who knows.

To date we've hardly seen any offices relocate from the 905 back into the core, yes very little has taken place the other way either in the last 5 years or so.

I think if Toronto wants to keep growing we need more and more office space downtown, that can't stop. Though I agree steady expansion is the way to go.

My concern is once the large corporations get their share of new space you won't see any more growth, there's only so many large Canadian companies in the core today. The 905 benefits from the back offices of Canadian companies and many many American companies (in growing amounts).

Calgary becoming a significant global player??....

There never really was a downturn in Calgary, is why. I think oil hit $30 for about 3 minutes but beyond that, things have been full steam ahead since 2004 or so.

I love statements like this ... 'yes' as of 11:30 pm Calgary is a significant global player.

What does it even mean to be a "significant global player" ? There's a lot more office space in many many American cities, does it make them "global players" ? Maybe, yes, no ?

How about; Calgary is Calgary and it's continuously improving, new office space isn't significant here, Calgary is already core centric in terms of employment (which is great in my books, but others will argue otherwise) so its all the other areas that need to continue to improve.

I think Calgary will be remain dominant for the foreseeable future; Most of the growth is fueled (did you like the pun?) by the resource industry, but no matter what anyone argues, this industry will boom for the 30/50+ years no doubt about it, what happens after who knows, but that applies to everything.

Let me clarify for you. Becoming a significant global player within the Energy/Financial Services sector. Everybody needs energy, so it'll be interesting to see how this all unfolds and how the industry evolves in the city of Calgary and other major global energy markets.

Didn't just happen as of 11:30pm, been in the works for years, but more and more the city is registering on the global radar and this is apparent with more and more global firms setting up shop such as investment banks, real-estate firms, law firms, construction firms etc.

by the definition of political boundary only...calgary has pleeeeenty of suburb.

Yea I actually thought so ... but, in terms of employment, isn't that mainly in the core ? Unlike most other cities in North America.

Well it's all driven by the energy sector, the law firms, the banks, the construction companies ... they're service industry for the large energy companies.

Anyways, in that sense, yes, Calgary is a huge player and that's only likely to grow.

Sorry it's just when I hear 'global player' I think of the silly 'Alpha vs Beta cities' or top 10 most 'livable' cities ... or worse yet 'supertall' ... arg ...

I think about 25% or so, while 35% is in industrial areas in the SE.

I forget which paper I read that in though.

The word "suburb" depends entirely on definition and context. River Heights used to be considered a "suburb". ;)

White collar work is mostly focused in the core, though commercial office nodes are becoming more common outside the core. Calgary also has a few major industrial parks that employ about as many people as the CBD, so not everyone here works in an office downtown.