Sponsored content provided by The City of Calgary.

After years of negative trends for Calgary, Alberta’s downtown, the combined efforts of industry and municipal government are transforming the city’s core into a magnet for people to live, work, play, innovate and shop. The City of Calgary has a pipeline of 11 office conversion projects, which will replace 1.57 million square feet of office space with more than 1,400 new homes and 200 new hotel suites. It is just the beginning of a goal to replace 6 million square feet of vacant office space with vibrant housing, retail, hotel and education space by 2031.

“When our downtown thrives, Calgary thrives,” said Thom Mahler, director, downtown strategy at The City of Calgary. “We know that people must be at the heart of a great downtown. That’s why we are motivated to get more homes made quickly and then match that with all the elements that make downtown living an exceptional and unique experience.”

While the city makes major investments in high-profile projects like the BMO Centre, Arts Commons and Olympic Plaza, the downtown strategy team is facilitating major partnerships with the development industry to deliberately transform downtown into an active, 24-7 community. This includes four incentive programs to support the conversion or demolition of vacant and underused office space. The city council has allocated a total of $217.5 million, including $52.5 million from the Housing Accelerator Fund, to support these programs with additional conversion projects expected to be announced later this year.

“With every new person who is drawn to this transforming community, we are delivering on the promise of a future-proofed downtown that benefits all Calgarians,” said Mahler. “We couldn’t do this without the collaboration of so many industry members who share our vision of a strong downtown, and I look forward to every new partnership to come.”

Learn more about downtown incentive programs as part of Calgary’s Downtown Strategy.