Calgary represents the best commercial real estate market in Western Canada and will set new standards for leases rates this decade, a panel of experts told a NAOIP meeting in Vancouver this month.
“Calgary is a market that blows everyone away,” said Tom Knoepfel, senior vice- president and portfolio manager, Western Canada, for Cadillac Fairveiw. Knoepfel noted that, three years ago, most analysts were forecasting a 20 per cent office vacancy rate in Calgary. “Instead it is close to 0 per cent,” he said. (Actually it is around 4 per cent, down from 13 per cent two yeas ago.) Panelists Chuck We, director of leasing for Oxford Properties and Remco Daal, president and CEO of Bentall Kennedy, also picked Alberta’s biggest city as leading Western commercial markets this year.
The strength of Calgary’s office sector was underscored this month when the Prism Group of Companies began construction of a new Calgary office tower. Planned to meet LEED gold standards, the 11-storey building Prism Place building is ascending on 11th Avenue SW in the Beltline district. More than 60 per cent of the tower’s 200,000 square feet of space has already been leased, according to Ricky Arshi, president of PRISM Investments, the investment arm of Prism Group of Companies.
Daal said he expects Calgary to “reset the bar” with significant commercial rental rate increases over the next few years. Noting the city’s low office and industrial vacancy rates and the strength of the resource sector, Daal said, “The rest of the world would kill for this market.”
