Posted Jun 9, 2019, 8:16 PM
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ARTchitecture
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Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Cala Ghearraidh
Posts: 22,842
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Quote:
Originally Posted by maikan
Reality principle:
Read in G&M
The scale of Calgary’s problem can be seen three kilometres west of Ms. Doody’s business at Fifth Avenue Place downtown. The two-tower complex is an ocean of blue glass and was the headquarters of Imperial Oil until recently. Its market value, and consequently its property tax bill, has plummeted according to data from the city. In the single year before 2019, the municipal assessment for the complex fell by 46 per cent from $429-million to $231-million.
When oil prices began to slide in 2015, the city pegged the value of Fifth Avenue Place at $916-million.
Fifteen floors in the complex are listed as either fully or partially vacant. Brookfield, the property’s owner, did not respond to a request for comment.
Across the street from Fifth Avenue Place, Bow Valley Square saw the second-largest decline in assessment over the past year among the city’s 20 most valuable properties. Worth just shy of $900-million in 2015, the building’s value has plummeted to $236-million in 2019.
“It’s no secret that Calgary is experiencing an extremely challenging office market that has impacted values for owners across the city," said Daniel O'Donnell, a spokesman for building owner Oxford. He said the vacancy rate at Bow Valley Square is currently 10 per cent below the downtown's average vacancy rate.
Stuart Barron, Cushman & Wakefield's national research director, has never observed building values drop by as much as they have in Calgary in recent years. A quarter of Calgary’s downtown office space is currently empty, he said. With new buildings under construction, the vacancy rate is expected to stay stubbornly high through the next decade.
“You could put all the available space in downtown Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Ottawa inside of Calgary’s available space and you’d have space to spare. That’s an incredible story, which highlights the impact of the oil crunch. No one expected the depth and length of this depressed cycle,” Mr. Barron said.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/cana...igit-property/ |
I see, but what does that, at all, have to do with what I said about Telus Sky raising the property values on the low-rise retail buildings on Stephen Avenue in the immediate vicinity? Both BVS and EAP are multiple blocks away from Telus Sky, with EAP being 6 blocks away, and BVS being 3 blocks south of Stephen Avenue. Everyone knows Calgary's going through a tough time for our office space, yet our inner city population reached its all-time high two years ago and is increasing faster than ever before (the Beltline growing by 1700 between 20177 and 2018). Even though our unemployment is at some of the highest we've seen in decades over the last few years, 7% would be considered business as usual or even good in a good portion of areas of the country, so I mean... whatever. Things might be bad for office owners and property taxes, but a ton of other areas are doing a lot better than they have in a very long time (one easily viewable metric being that we have 22 residential/mixed use skyscrapers UC right now, more than double Edmonton's number and almost twice Ottawa's, plus an uncountable number of low and mid-rise MF structures). Either way, we needed a correction, and this is it. Thank gods.
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