Truth North Commercial Real Estate Investment Trust is reportedly undergoing due diligence to buy a Calgary office building, joining a number of institutional investors in the city.
True North did not identify any of three office properties it is currently planning to purchase, but said two are in the Toronto area and the third in Calgary. All three are owned by what it calls “arm’s-length vendors.”
The total purchase price is $222.5 million, and the three properties in total comprise 624,000 square feet of leasable space.
The Calgary property is 209,000 square feet and leased to a government-related tenant. All are fully occupied, according to renx.ca.
True North is not alone in shopping for Calgary commercial real estate.
Slate Asset Management bought a block-long string of buildings on Stephen Avenue in downtown Calgary, and has wrapped up the purchase of approximately 2.5 million square feet of commercial space over the past two years. Slate has closed on Stephen Avenue Place, Joffre Place, Life Plaza, the Venator building and the Kraft building. In all, the Toronto-based company now has a lock on more than 5 per cent of Calgary’s downtown office inventory.
In 2018, Spear Street Capital paid $98 million for Calgary’s IBM Corporate Park, and a third-acre parcel on 14 Street NE was sold for $102 million in a retail design-build agreement.
More recently, Guardian Capital Corp. paid $17.4 million in June 2019 for an industrial site on Frontier Road, the biggest industrial deal of the year so far in Calgary.
