Calgary soon to outstrip Montreal as office centre
By Allison Lampert, The Gazette March 27, 2012
http://www.montrealgazette.com/busin...#ixzz1qRHR8cZQ
MONTREAL - Driven by a commodities-fuelled boom, Calgary is expected to overtake Montreal as Canada’s second-largest downtown office market after Toronto, commercial real estate executives predict.
“Our expectation is that Calgary is eventually going to surpass what we have in our core,” said Louis Burgos, senior managing director of real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield in Montreal.
“I would expect it.”
Strong demand by oil companies for large blocks of space in Calgary, combined with nearly a decade-long absence of new office tower construction in downtown Montreal, have narrowed the gap between the two cities over the last six years.
According to Cushman & Wakefield projections, Montreal’s central office inventory will hit 49.2 million square feet in 2016, compared with 48.8 million square feet in Calgary, a gap of just 400,000 square feet. In 2007, Montreal’s central office inventory was larger than Calgary’s by about 10 million square feet, Cushman data says.