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The void in Calgary: How office towers emptied in a once bustling downtown

197 points by Geekette 5y ago

hasmanean 5y ago
I was in Calgary at the height of the oil boom in 2008, and even then downtown was a ghost town on winter/fall Sundays. I left because the number of high-tech companies could be counted quite easily. There were pockets of excellence though. While there is a toxic attitude present there at the same time people can be very open and honest and friendly too. I love the can-do spirit…when they want to people just go ahead and do it. That was refreshing after a lifetime in Toronto.
Gigachad 5y ago
Remote work has shifted demands and it’s going to take some work to realign supply with demand. Some of these office towers should be suitable to refit in to apartment buildings. There is never going to be as much demand for office space as there was. The future of cities is being a place to live and the local councils need to fit out cities as comfortable spaces with nice facilities.
- WalterGR 5y ago
  "Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, Calgary had the highest rate of commercial vacancies in Canada as an economic downturn driven by the price of oil hollowed out the city’s downtown office towers."
  - pixelgeek 5y ago
    Funny, I was going to bring this up. Calgary used to have one of the highest concentrations of head offices in Canada. The tax rates here were minimal. I had some friends who did presentation and multimedia development for those companies who were suggesting I move here in the early 2000s since they were swamped with work. Tax rates fell in other provinces and those head offices relocated to take advantage of the new rates as they tend to do. People want to blame the oil prices and covid but there was a shift in head offices out of Calgary well before either event. The main driver was that other provinces beat Alberta to the 'race to the bottom' in terms of tax rates. It is an indicator that development priorities are ass-backwards. We try to attract big corporations thinking they will bring jobs instead of making cities liveable and attracting or building smaller businesses that will actually stay and help keep the city and the province economically feasible.
- VLM 5y ago
  > The future of cities is being a place to live The striking part of the linked story is they didn't ask anyone why they don't want to live there, or why they moved away, etc. Just "tax rates always go up and after redevelopment rents will go up even more and I have no idea why nobody is here". Maybe they have a severe crime problem, or the commute is unbearable, or there's no public transit, or the city council makes bars close at 8pm so young adults can't party. There's plenty of examples from other cities of how to kill a downtown, I'm just curious what Calgary did specifically. Every city in the world has tax problems and redevelopers pushing rents upward. Whats special about Calgary is ... (maybe answer is 'nothing' which is itself the problem?)
  - mmastrac 5y ago
    There are some major cultural issues: Everything shuts down at 5pm and people move back to the suburbs after work. It's fairly dead downtown after rush hour. Finding a coffee shop open at 8 or 9pm? Very few of them. Art isn't a priority here. Public art installations are ridiculed as a waste of money (though some are accepted over time). Museums and galleries here are minimal. Music is sterile and many groups skip playing in Alberta. It has gotten better, but Alberta had a reputation for chasing away "immoral" acts in the 90s and 2000s. Politics are toxic. The current government was elected under a cloud of electoral fraud, does not play well with the opposition and is laser-focused on oil and gas. Alberta is designed for cars and public transit is a bolt-on, expensive afterthought. This isn't unique to Alberta but it doesn't help. We do have a growing set of bike lanes and support for that has surprised me pleasantly. Alberta is rich from oil money and if you're in that club, life is good. If not, you're not important to the conversation. I was lucky to spend a lot of time travelling to the Bay Area, Seattle and other places to see what culture a town could bring beyond "being close to the mountains". I really wish this place would focus on it, but at times it feels like the province is allergic and negatively responds to having any sort of culture.
    - pixelgeek 5y ago
      > Alberta is designed for cars and public transit is a bolt-on, expensive afterthought. Being downtown even in the afternoon when there are people there is horrible. There is so much traffic and noise that you don't want to even bother exploring or checking things out. I avoid downtown. > I really wish this place would focus on it, but at times it feels like the province is allergic and negatively responds to having any sort of culture. "culture' doesn't fill your campaign coffers and provide 'incentives' to local politicians.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  It's tough to convert office space to housing. Thing about a floor of cubicles: how does that become 10 apartments each with a kitchen, adequate windows, and bathrooms?
  - ff317 5y ago
    Sounds like a great economic opportunity for some construction contracting companies to specialize in these offices-to-apartments conversions. It is possible to gut a lot of the "soft" walls and infrastructure on each floor, bring in more plumbing, and re-build a new floorplan. I'd wager the companies doing these conversions can make a tidy profit (and create employment opportunities!), and still charge the building owners a reasonable-enough rate that they'd rather go this route than sell a dying office building at a huge loss. You can get a bit creative with this too: e.g. dedicate some floors of the new apartment skyscraper as co-working spaces, and try to plan it so that everyone who rents in the building can use the co-working spaces for "free" as part of their rent and still have some leftover capacity to sell co-working memberships to others nearby as well.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      I question how many people would actually want to live there if the offices are so empty. In principle, there's no reason you couldn't have a city the residents of which mostly commute out to work and/or work from their homes. But historically jobs have been the main magnet that attracts people to actually live in cities. Yes, especially among younger people, cities are also attractive for other reasons but by and large not enough to cause them to live there lacking other drivers.
    - somerandomqaguy 5y ago
      It's not as straight forward as that. One of the major hurdles AFAIK is that many of those office buildings still has asbestos in them in very significant quantities; the buildings were made before the dangers of asbestos were realized. There was some reasons for leaving it in place, and to be fair a major renovation would have to run into these hurdles either way. But it's probably going to be quite a bit more costly then you're imagining.
mnemotronic 5y ago
So who was on the city council & planning commission in 2010-2018? Did they, by any chance work for the oil or building construction sectors?
darrery 5y ago
This needs to be addressed, there are a lot of skyscrapers that are abandoned, and it seems that it looks like a ghost town inside of a concrete jungle.
bluefirebrand 5y ago
Calgary is very much a city where people would come from all over to make money because there was lots of work available, high salaries for unskilled people and even higher salaries for skilled. I moved here in 2017 and frankly it's shocking how much different the city is now from the stories people tell me what it was before. It's shocking the number of layoffs I have heard about since I moved here. I'm surprised the city hasn't seen a massive exodus of people unable to find work.
- hluska 5y ago
  I moved to Calgary in 1997. At this point, I’d kill to say I was an infant, but I was already an adult. At least I was a young adult?? I remember the weekend I drove out to find a place to live. It was early July and I was looking to rent for September 1. There was nothing available. I don’t mean there was nothing in my price range or there were places, but they were at the corner of crack rock and gunshot wound. There was nothing… Sunday morning, I called my boss to tell her that I was really worried I wouldn’t be able to find a place. I drove back to Regina Monday without even looking at a place. By Tuesday, she talked one of her friends into renting me a room in his house and I couriered a year of rent cheques to him without even seeing the place. Six months in, I started looking for an apartment. I lucked out, found a one bedroom and was so damned happy that I rented two places for two months. Nobody in Calgary was even remotely surprised that I’d pay rent on two places - rather, they were surprised that I only rented two places for two months. Work wise, my company wasn’t even that big, but we couldn’t find enough space for all of us in one building so we were spread out over parts of six floors in four buildings. I liked working there, but if I ever had a bad morning, I could have walked out, made a half dozen calls, walked to my friend’s record store on 17th and had six job offers by the time I made it back downtown. Some of my friends who interviewed there had final questions like “Can you start now? No, what about later this afternoon? Okay, tomorrow? What if we pay you a two week bonus?”
- StrictDabbler 5y ago
  Every eight to twelve years Calgary goes through a boom and bust cycle. This has been happening forever. There are years where everybody's moving to Calgary and buying rolexes and years where petrochemical engineers are driving taxis. It seems unlikely that Calgary will get another real boom, though. Now that Alberta's mostly just shipping the northern oil sands off through pipelines there isn't a lot of use in having huge offices there.
mmastrac 5y ago
Odd to see my hometown here on HN, though many HNers are from here. Calgary has some unique issues -- the major ones being that the politics of the province are brutally toxic and this has halted and even reversed a lot of gains we made in the last decade trying to turn it around. Oil and gas dying is part of the problem, but ask many new grads from local universities why they are leaving and the answer is mainly that this is just not the place for them. That's a terrible sign for the future. The comment by julianlam elsewhere in this thread reminded me of a time I toured a local startup's office who had "reclaimed" an executive level of a previous oil and gas company. The entire floor was decorated like a Roman Emperor's quarters and the boardroom table itself was worth somewhere north of $200k (possibly as much as half a millon).
- izend 5y ago
  Timely article today in CBC News: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/young-albertans-leaving-the-province-1.6208420 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/young-albertans-leavi...
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  > Oil and gas dying is part of the problem, but ask many new grads from local universities why they are leaving and the answer is mainly that this is just not the place for them. That's a terrible sign for the future I am a young guy in Calgary and from Calgary. More than half my high school classmates are gone. Packed up to Vancouver or Toronto, with a few stateside. Most came back after university for a bit, but then departed.
  - sunsunsunsun 5y ago
    I had the same experience, nearly all the people I knew from high school left Calgary/Alberta. Including myself. The few people who stayed work in oil and gas.
  - cmauniada 5y ago
    Also from Calgary and just graduated, all of the people I knew from my group have moved to the states. Not really sure what I’m doing here but I enjoy my job so I don’t think I’ll move anytime soon.
julianlam 5y ago
I had the rare opportunity to visit Encana's offices in the Bow a number of years ago... Their offices really embodied the "live large" aspect of oil & gas. As the founder of a small company that hadn't yet turned a profit, I was suitably impressed. Sad to hear they no longer even occupy the space. On the other hand, their tech scene blew me away. Polar opposite of Toronto's "network first, friends later" attitude. Startups were helping each other out as a matter of course, whereas it always seemed like a competition in TO.
jlos 5y ago
While there are obviously genuine environmental concerns, Calgary's decline seems to me a combination of two major forces. First and foremost is economic opposition from the US, who went from the largest consumer of Canadian oil to its largest competitor in the past 10 years. Second, political polarities in Canada that tend to favor concentrating political and economic power along the cities of the St Lawrence instead of Alberta. It would probably be too much to say that the Eastern provinces want Alberta to do poorly, but given the Liberals an d the NDP simply hold no seats in Alberta, there is no incentive to defend its provincial interests (in comparison to say a Quebec company like Bombardier). However at the moment maybe it's for the better, you don't need to be in the 1% of income earners to buy a house in Calgary.
- x1ph0z 5y ago
  That’s flat out wrong. The liberals won a seat last election, and they had won seats there back in 2015 as well.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  Canada's fault for not investing in a domestic refinery to generate and sell higher margin petroleum products.
  - soperj 5y ago
    We have a bunch, the one in Saint John is one of the bigger refineries in the world (325000 barrels per day), not top 10 or anything. Of course it's all refined crude from Saudi.
  - notenoughbeans 5y ago
    The issue is that Canada is a large country with diverse priorities that are not shared equally among the populace. Many Canadians are strongly against any sort of investment in fossil fuels of any kind.
    - BingoAhoy 5y ago
      To expand upon my parents take, according to Peter Zeihan's opinion piece which shows an interesting glimpse into Alberta and its conflicts with other anti-oil vested interests https://zeihan.com/albertas-tryst-with-destiny/ https://zeihan.com/albertas-tryst-with-destiny/: Alberta oil has constantly been blocked, stalled, and given added friction from leaving Alberta by neighboring territories. Keystone xl pipeline just got axed by Biden and the transmountain pipeline was stalled for years by British Columbia. Makes me wonder how much of Calgary's downstream economic woes is an attributable result of these upstream anti-oil plays.
arcosdev 5y ago
Sounds like typical boom and bust Alberta to me. This could very likely be the last "bust" though.
- nikanj 5y ago
  That's what people have said every time there is a bust. And every time there is a boom, too, with the whole "this time it's different and won't crash"
  - arcosdev 5y ago
    For the sake of my family living in Alberta, I hope that is the case and this is just a temporary condition, but with the way oil and gas is going and the terrible government running the show in AB right now, I am not very optimistic.
  - klyrs 5y ago
    As long as their booms are fueled by oil, we're all better off if this is the last one.
MrDresden 5y ago
I was in a relationship with an Albertan between 2014-2016, and moved to Edmonton from Europe in early 2015 (had flown over a couple of times in the prior year). Even though the city was marketed as the "fun" city with all its events and festivals, I found it to be remarkably dead looking (architecturally cold concrete downtown, McMansions and overdeveloped cookie cutter cul de sacs everywhere). Then we took a trip to Calgary for a couple of days, and I saw an even less appealing place. Don't get me wrong, these places were filled with nice people, many which I miss having contact with. But I would not have been able to settle there permanently (architecturally cold cities, extreme overconsumption, focus on fossil fuels and more played a role).
- throwaway222145 5y ago
  Edmonton is the most depressing city I have ever been in. It was like walking into Silent Hill.
- xmcqdpt2 5y ago
  Edmonton is home to the second largest mall in North America https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Edmonton_Mall https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Edmonton_Mall yet Edmonton itself is only the 33rd largest city in NA. As someone who grew up in a dull commuter suburb and hated every minute of it, this ratio of mall size to population is not inspiring.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Having a large indoor area for people to congregate and entertain themselves in a location with very long and cold winters might not be comparable to having one in a location with milder weather.
    - Fricken 5y ago
      Living in Edmonton, I don't see much evidence of the mall apocalypse that is supposedly affecting the rest of North America.
    - 5y ago
cfcf14 5y ago
I lived and worked in Edmonton and Calgary for about 8 years before moving to London (UK) and I can confidently say that I have no intention of ever going back. To me, those two cities are exemplars for the concept of 'soul-less glass and steel altars to capitalism'. They're now even more desolate as millennials such as myself left for better opportunities. I also agree with other commenters that the politics there are toxic, and very much stuck in the past. I wish the best for everybody remaining there, hopefully they can transition to a more sustainable economic model and excise the regressive, entitled political culture that's sprung forth from decades of unbridled decadence.
GlennS 5y ago
Ill-informed opinion: I asked a colleague from the magical land of Canadia whether I should take a flight to London from Edmonton or Calgary after travelling through the Canadian Rockies. She said Edmonton was shit, so Calgary. As of 2019, Calgary was a kind of US-style car block city, except with nothing to do. Certainly not for tourists. I hope Edmonton isn't really worse, because zzzzz. I was interviewed by the local TV news when I tried to visit a tall building, which was closed. They do have a lovely park stretching along the river though. I think it'd be a pretty decent place to live if you had a bunch of friends to hang out with. And maybe loads of money too? That helps.
- goodcanadian 5y ago
  I grew up in Alberta. I am reasonably familiar with both Edmonton and Calgary. Neither is a terribly exciting city, but I would not say "Edmonton is shit." Really, I think they are more or less the same. Edmonton has an even nicer system of parks along the North Saskatchewan River, and isn't terrible for festivals and such in the summer. Calgary's main strength is its proximity to the Rocky mountains. I can't think of much in Calgary proper that I would recommend to tourists, except possibly the stampede. Edmonton has West Edmonton mall if that is your thing. YMMV.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  IMO it's a lot like Denver. Denver downtown is pretty boring, but there are lots of cool neighborhoods outside of downtown with some character and fun spots. Large, car-oriented, sprawling, flat. Oh, and access to some of the best hiking and skiing in the world.
- skeeter2020 5y ago
  Strong Calgary booster here though I'm originally from BC (~20 years ago). I was one of the economic migrants that caused the population to explode as were many (most?) of the people who moved here in that period. If you were voluntarily willing to pack-up and move across the country for work, demographically you were typically: young, educated and motivated (vs. historically it was desperate and motivated). Calgary still feels "small" for a million-plus people and very meritocratic. It has a neighbourly feel that is very Canadian-prairries, less than an hour to the mountains and not as cold as you might think (outside of February) due to chinooks. If you're looking for exciting cities I'd stay away from almost ALL Canadian and US locations, but if you're looking for a big cities that supports a lifestyle that's not urba-based, Calgary is pretty great. Everything my family does is either walking distance or a very short drive (I live in the NW beltline) yet I'm very close to all the outdoor-centric activies I love.
fleventynine 5y ago
I worked in Calgary as a software engineer from 2000-2012 at various places, but never in big oil. At the time, a low cost of living, outdoor recreation opportunities, relatively young and healthy population, and good wages for engineers (compared to the rest of Canada) kept me there. I left for a big-tech job in the bay area, but I still miss elements of the Calgary lifestyle. In particular, the insanely low mortgage payments compared to wages led to a feeling that I could feasibly bootstrap a business without taking a huge financial risk.
pixelgeek 5y ago
> Calgary is now searching for ways to fix a problem that has left the city’s downtown – which already had a reputation as a lifeless collection of skyscrapers filled with people who clear out at the end of every workday The situation isn't unique to Calgary. It is the same in a lot of other urban centres (like Oakland) where there was no development focus on anything other than head offices and high rises. Compare Calgary to Vancouver (I live in C and spent 20+ years in V) where there was some effort to make the downtown a more livable space. I think the downtown here in Calgary is ghastly. Loud. Ugly. Who would want to spend any time in it? I used to walk around downtown Vancouver all the time. Never do that here. For decades the governments running Calgary, and Alberta, have not really given a shit about anyone other than large businesses (and their campaign funding) and those businesses have done what they normally do and moved elsewhere once things got tough or they got a better deal. And, as usual, taxpayers and residents are left with the remains once the party is over and businesses have moved on. In this case the city has an unliveable downtown filled with skyscrapers no-one wants to move into.
- voisin 5y ago
  Am I incorrect in thinking Vancouver’s downtown is still extremely low density relative to Calgary’s downtown? And I understand it was only fairly recently that Calgary approved residential / multi-use zoning units core?
  - katbyte 5y ago
    Vancouver is far more dense, google an arial image of each to compare. There are suburbs of Vancouver with density equal to Calgary it looks like.
  - pixelgeek 5y ago
    As @katbyte mentions, Vancouver downtown is very dense. The city had a very progressive urban planning department until about 2007 or so and it shows. I am not as familiar with the downtown as it exists now but the downtown was, when I lived there, very different than almost any downtown I have been in in North America with the possible exception of San Fran.
pycal 5y ago
I grew up in Calgary, and after spending the last 14 years in Toronto I have decided to move back. Income taxes are way lower in Alberta than Ontario; moving my remote-ok tech job to calgary was equivalent to getting a five-figure raise. Cycling in Toronto is a life-threatening activity, and Calgary has something like 150km of paved urban pathway. The politics are toxic in both places. Calgary is just quieter and I like that. I’m sick of listening to construction, sirens, street car clattering, and apt hvac systems. The water in Calgary looks appetizing - I spent a lot of time in the outer harbour in Toronto and am acutely aware of the water quality advisories. The shoreline of Toronto’s harbour front is ugly as sin. Chunks of the Gardiner is falling on peoples’ cars, and is a source of horrible, dementia-inducing noise pollution. Anyone with a balcony in Fort York or City Place probably used it for the first time during the pandemic, and otherwise is just their storage locker. Calgary has a stunning river that glows with mineralized rocky mountain water, and you can walk or cycle along it for exercise because it isn’t so oversubscribed as the pan am path. Transit is terrible in both towns but living on the subway was great. I can afford a 1700sqft inner city calgary home with a garage and a yard for the price of a 900sqft 2bed downtown toronto condo. The recreation opportunities in Calgary are year round, but in Toronto I felt like the onot things to do in the winter were restaurants and the ago. The food scene in Toronto is amazing. I miss sushi. The music scene too. But Calgary has world class examples of all this, and this stuff is a lower priority than it once was. Everything is 8 minutes away from me in Calgary. Try getting anywhere in 8 minutes in Toronto, what with the choking traffic, and the fact that all your friends have to move to orangeville and whitby because of rising prices. Both cities have incredible energy. I was in calgary for the red mile, and at yonge and dundas when the raps won. Calgary for me is a better place on balance.
- xtracto 5y ago
  > I can afford a 1700sqft inner city calgary home with a garage and a yard for the price of a 900sqft 2bed downtown toronto condo. I thought that Canada used the metric system. You and also the article expresses measurements in imperial units. Is that still used in Canada?
  - kingofpandora 5y ago
michaelje 5y ago
I live downtown. You can see my building on that map. I moved to Canada in the infamous March of 2020. Downtown is sterile. A nice cafe or more likely a nice restaurant will pop up - but there is nothing around it. In Summer, walking a few blocks is fine. In Winter…… There are tech jobs, as the many government funded programs will promote - but it’s a drop in the ocean compared to the big cities. And none of the majors, really. I feel like I’m just biding time here now. When this lease is up, I expect to move to Vancouver, or maybe even Toronto. Taxes are slightly lower, sure. But you’re paying for that, even if indirectly.
- FredPret 5y ago
  Toronto sure has a lot to offer. Every neighbourhood downtown has its charms. But you pay for it, and then some.
- WalterGR 5y ago
  Downtown is sterile. A nice cafe or more likely a nice restaurant will pop up - but there is nothing around it. In Summer, walking a few blocks is fine. In Winter…… In its defense (I have no horse in this fight) lots of downtowns in the US are like that. They’re places to work that empty out at 5pm. Seattle comes to mind. Maybe Chicago and St. Louis? It’s been a long time since I’ve been to those, though...
rakejake 5y ago
I interned at UCalgary during Summer of 2016 as part of an international students exchange program. After the initial euphoria of being in a foreign land, I felt pretty much the same way as many other posters here. The people are exceedingly polite, the infrastructure is top notch (compared to most American cities I have visited) and feels like it was built assuming 130% capacity or something. The public transit was free downtown. The city govt was clearly doing a bit of work. Yet I felt the downtown area very lacking. Calgary on the whole had a very uncanny valley feel to it. Apart from the weather I don't have any complaints about the city. The nature and recreation is world class, Indian food is aplenty, the people are incredibly nice and accommodating yet I wouldn't go back. I guess it just wasn't for me.
- ghaff 5y ago
  Honestly, what you say is pretty typical for a lot of North American cities--and elsewhere as well. (Although many/most don't have the nature and recreation options.) There's nothing wrong with them necessarily. But unless you specifically value living in a city for some walkable access to a few restaurants, markets, etc. there usually are not a lot of unique entertainment and other options that aren't available pretty much everywhere that isn't very rural.
  - pixelgeek 5y ago
    > Honestly, what you say is pretty typical for a lot of North American cities Not the infrastructure. Almost every American city I visited looked like it was falling apart.
    - rakejake 5y ago
      Yes, I found this very surprising. Calgary is as car centric as any average American city and yet they had amazing footpaths and shining public transit. To be fair, their infrastructure is much newer and they don't really have a crime/homeless problem
  - rakejake 5y ago
    I don't think so. I'm talking about the vibe of a city. Iirc pg wrote an article long back about the vibe of a city. Vibe is a bit amorphous but I tend to think of vibe as a condensed view of what the city is about, a function of political tendencies, culture (music, sports, tech, entrepreneurship etc) and general friendliness. Job opportunities and decent social life are usually necessary conditions. Major cities like SF and NYC usually have all of them, provided you can afford living there. But a city like San Antonio cannot offer everything, so if you don't dig Texan/Hispanic culture and don't like basketball, the grand river walk is not going to make you want to live there.
rfwhyte 5y ago
One thing the article didn't mention, that at least I think plays a factor, is for whatever reason, no matter how long their properties sit vacant and empty, commercial landlords never seem to lower their lease rates. For some esoteric reason I don't fully understand that likely is some combination of taxes, capital gains and market pricing, commercial landlords seem to think its more advantageous to let properties sit empty for years, than in it is to lower their rates to see them occupied. Where I live in Vancouver there are busy commercial neighborhoods that have had literally dozens of storefronts sit empty for years because no one can afford the leases and the landlords won't lower their rates. It just seems to me, an admittedly unsophisticated commercial real estate neophyte, that the market for commercial real-estate seems to be fundamentally detached from market forces, likely due to the creation of taxation and regulation regime that provides incentives for commercial landlords to hold vacant properties rather than lower rates and if we as a society want to fix this, we need to look frameworks that are in place that make it a better deal for commercial landlords to sit on vacant properties than react to market forces and lower rates.
oystersauce 5y ago
Calgary is an interesting city at an interesting time. It’s ripe for a new industry, but I’m not sure simply catering to tech is the way to go. There’s high talent, high education, and cheap office space. Housing is also affordable as far as large Canadian cities go. Like many comments in here, I’m tempted to move back there to take advantage of that.
rajnathani 5y ago
A key point mentioned in the end of the post: > To bring more people downtown, several office towers have already been turned into apartments, and the federal government has set aside $300-million to convert commercial properties across Canada to rental housing.

197 points by Geekette 5y ago

I was in Calgary at the height of the oil boom in 2008, and even then downtown was a ghost town on winter/fall Sundays. I left because the number of high-tech companies could be counted quite easily. There were pockets of excellence though. While there is a toxic attitude present there at the same time people can be very open and honest and friendly too. I love the can-do spirit…when they want to people just go ahead and do it. That was refreshing after a lifetime in Toronto.

Gigachad 5y ago

Remote work has shifted demands and it’s going to take some work to realign supply with demand. Some of these office towers should be suitable to refit in to apartment buildings. There is never going to be as much demand for office space as there was. The future of cities is being a place to live and the local councils need to fit out cities as comfortable spaces with nice facilities.

WalterGR 5y ago
"Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, Calgary had the highest rate of commercial vacancies in Canada as an economic downturn driven by the price of oil hollowed out the city’s downtown office towers."
- pixelgeek 5y ago
  Funny, I was going to bring this up. Calgary used to have one of the highest concentrations of head offices in Canada. The tax rates here were minimal. I had some friends who did presentation and multimedia development for those companies who were suggesting I move here in the early 2000s since they were swamped with work. Tax rates fell in other provinces and those head offices relocated to take advantage of the new rates as they tend to do. People want to blame the oil prices and covid but there was a shift in head offices out of Calgary well before either event. The main driver was that other provinces beat Alberta to the 'race to the bottom' in terms of tax rates. It is an indicator that development priorities are ass-backwards. We try to attract big corporations thinking they will bring jobs instead of making cities liveable and attracting or building smaller businesses that will actually stay and help keep the city and the province economically feasible.
VLM 5y ago
> The future of cities is being a place to live The striking part of the linked story is they didn't ask anyone why they don't want to live there, or why they moved away, etc. Just "tax rates always go up and after redevelopment rents will go up even more and I have no idea why nobody is here". Maybe they have a severe crime problem, or the commute is unbearable, or there's no public transit, or the city council makes bars close at 8pm so young adults can't party. There's plenty of examples from other cities of how to kill a downtown, I'm just curious what Calgary did specifically. Every city in the world has tax problems and redevelopers pushing rents upward. Whats special about Calgary is ... (maybe answer is 'nothing' which is itself the problem?)
- mmastrac 5y ago
  There are some major cultural issues: Everything shuts down at 5pm and people move back to the suburbs after work. It's fairly dead downtown after rush hour. Finding a coffee shop open at 8 or 9pm? Very few of them. Art isn't a priority here. Public art installations are ridiculed as a waste of money (though some are accepted over time). Museums and galleries here are minimal. Music is sterile and many groups skip playing in Alberta. It has gotten better, but Alberta had a reputation for chasing away "immoral" acts in the 90s and 2000s. Politics are toxic. The current government was elected under a cloud of electoral fraud, does not play well with the opposition and is laser-focused on oil and gas. Alberta is designed for cars and public transit is a bolt-on, expensive afterthought. This isn't unique to Alberta but it doesn't help. We do have a growing set of bike lanes and support for that has surprised me pleasantly. Alberta is rich from oil money and if you're in that club, life is good. If not, you're not important to the conversation. I was lucky to spend a lot of time travelling to the Bay Area, Seattle and other places to see what culture a town could bring beyond "being close to the mountains". I really wish this place would focus on it, but at times it feels like the province is allergic and negatively responds to having any sort of culture.
  - pixelgeek 5y ago
    > Alberta is designed for cars and public transit is a bolt-on, expensive afterthought. Being downtown even in the afternoon when there are people there is horrible. There is so much traffic and noise that you don't want to even bother exploring or checking things out. I avoid downtown. > I really wish this place would focus on it, but at times it feels like the province is allergic and negatively responds to having any sort of culture. "culture' doesn't fill your campaign coffers and provide 'incentives' to local politicians.
thehappypm 5y ago
It's tough to convert office space to housing. Thing about a floor of cubicles: how does that become 10 apartments each with a kitchen, adequate windows, and bathrooms?
- ff317 5y ago
  Sounds like a great economic opportunity for some construction contracting companies to specialize in these offices-to-apartments conversions. It is possible to gut a lot of the "soft" walls and infrastructure on each floor, bring in more plumbing, and re-build a new floorplan. I'd wager the companies doing these conversions can make a tidy profit (and create employment opportunities!), and still charge the building owners a reasonable-enough rate that they'd rather go this route than sell a dying office building at a huge loss. You can get a bit creative with this too: e.g. dedicate some floors of the new apartment skyscraper as co-working spaces, and try to plan it so that everyone who rents in the building can use the co-working spaces for "free" as part of their rent and still have some leftover capacity to sell co-working memberships to others nearby as well.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    I question how many people would actually want to live there if the offices are so empty. In principle, there's no reason you couldn't have a city the residents of which mostly commute out to work and/or work from their homes. But historically jobs have been the main magnet that attracts people to actually live in cities. Yes, especially among younger people, cities are also attractive for other reasons but by and large not enough to cause them to live there lacking other drivers.
  - somerandomqaguy 5y ago
    It's not as straight forward as that. One of the major hurdles AFAIK is that many of those office buildings still has asbestos in them in very significant quantities; the buildings were made before the dangers of asbestos were realized. There was some reasons for leaving it in place, and to be fair a major renovation would have to run into these hurdles either way. But it's probably going to be quite a bit more costly then you're imagining.

mnemotronic 5y ago

So who was on the city council & planning commission in 2010-2018? Did they, by any chance work for the oil or building construction sectors?

darrery 5y ago

This needs to be addressed, there are a lot of skyscrapers that are abandoned, and it seems that it looks like a ghost town inside of a concrete jungle.

bluefirebrand 5y ago

Calgary is very much a city where people would come from all over to make money because there was lots of work available, high salaries for unskilled people and even higher salaries for skilled. I moved here in 2017 and frankly it's shocking how much different the city is now from the stories people tell me what it was before. It's shocking the number of layoffs I have heard about since I moved here. I'm surprised the city hasn't seen a massive exodus of people unable to find work.

hluska 5y ago
I moved to Calgary in 1997. At this point, I’d kill to say I was an infant, but I was already an adult. At least I was a young adult?? I remember the weekend I drove out to find a place to live. It was early July and I was looking to rent for September 1. There was nothing available. I don’t mean there was nothing in my price range or there were places, but they were at the corner of crack rock and gunshot wound. There was nothing… Sunday morning, I called my boss to tell her that I was really worried I wouldn’t be able to find a place. I drove back to Regina Monday without even looking at a place. By Tuesday, she talked one of her friends into renting me a room in his house and I couriered a year of rent cheques to him without even seeing the place. Six months in, I started looking for an apartment. I lucked out, found a one bedroom and was so damned happy that I rented two places for two months. Nobody in Calgary was even remotely surprised that I’d pay rent on two places - rather, they were surprised that I only rented two places for two months. Work wise, my company wasn’t even that big, but we couldn’t find enough space for all of us in one building so we were spread out over parts of six floors in four buildings. I liked working there, but if I ever had a bad morning, I could have walked out, made a half dozen calls, walked to my friend’s record store on 17th and had six job offers by the time I made it back downtown. Some of my friends who interviewed there had final questions like “Can you start now? No, what about later this afternoon? Okay, tomorrow? What if we pay you a two week bonus?”
StrictDabbler 5y ago
Every eight to twelve years Calgary goes through a boom and bust cycle. This has been happening forever. There are years where everybody's moving to Calgary and buying rolexes and years where petrochemical engineers are driving taxis. It seems unlikely that Calgary will get another real boom, though. Now that Alberta's mostly just shipping the northern oil sands off through pipelines there isn't a lot of use in having huge offices there.

mmastrac 5y ago

Odd to see my hometown here on HN, though many HNers are from here. Calgary has some unique issues -- the major ones being that the politics of the province are brutally toxic and this has halted and even reversed a lot of gains we made in the last decade trying to turn it around. Oil and gas dying is part of the problem, but ask many new grads from local universities why they are leaving and the answer is mainly that this is just not the place for them. That's a terrible sign for the future. The comment by julianlam elsewhere in this thread reminded me of a time I toured a local startup's office who had "reclaimed" an executive level of a previous oil and gas company. The entire floor was decorated like a Roman Emperor's quarters and the boardroom table itself was worth somewhere north of $200k (possibly as much as half a millon).

izend 5y ago
Timely article today in CBC News: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/young-albertans-leaving-the-province-1.6208420 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/young-albertans-leavi...
MattGaiser 5y ago
> Oil and gas dying is part of the problem, but ask many new grads from local universities why they are leaving and the answer is mainly that this is just not the place for them. That's a terrible sign for the future I am a young guy in Calgary and from Calgary. More than half my high school classmates are gone. Packed up to Vancouver or Toronto, with a few stateside. Most came back after university for a bit, but then departed.
- sunsunsunsun 5y ago
  I had the same experience, nearly all the people I knew from high school left Calgary/Alberta. Including myself. The few people who stayed work in oil and gas.
- cmauniada 5y ago
  Also from Calgary and just graduated, all of the people I knew from my group have moved to the states. Not really sure what I’m doing here but I enjoy my job so I don’t think I’ll move anytime soon.

julianlam 5y ago

I had the rare opportunity to visit Encana's offices in the Bow a number of years ago... Their offices really embodied the "live large" aspect of oil & gas. As the founder of a small company that hadn't yet turned a profit, I was suitably impressed. Sad to hear they no longer even occupy the space. On the other hand, their tech scene blew me away. Polar opposite of Toronto's "network first, friends later" attitude. Startups were helping each other out as a matter of course, whereas it always seemed like a competition in TO.

jlos 5y ago

While there are obviously genuine environmental concerns, Calgary's decline seems to me a combination of two major forces. First and foremost is economic opposition from the US, who went from the largest consumer of Canadian oil to its largest competitor in the past 10 years. Second, political polarities in Canada that tend to favor concentrating political and economic power along the cities of the St Lawrence instead of Alberta. It would probably be too much to say that the Eastern provinces want Alberta to do poorly, but given the Liberals an d the NDP simply hold no seats in Alberta, there is no incentive to defend its provincial interests (in comparison to say a Quebec company like Bombardier). However at the moment maybe it's for the better, you don't need to be in the 1% of income earners to buy a house in Calgary.

x1ph0z 5y ago
That’s flat out wrong. The liberals won a seat last election, and they had won seats there back in 2015 as well.
kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
Canada's fault for not investing in a domestic refinery to generate and sell higher margin petroleum products.
- soperj 5y ago
  We have a bunch, the one in Saint John is one of the bigger refineries in the world (325000 barrels per day), not top 10 or anything. Of course it's all refined crude from Saudi.
- notenoughbeans 5y ago
  The issue is that Canada is a large country with diverse priorities that are not shared equally among the populace. Many Canadians are strongly against any sort of investment in fossil fuels of any kind.
  - BingoAhoy 5y ago
    To expand upon my parents take, according to Peter Zeihan's opinion piece which shows an interesting glimpse into Alberta and its conflicts with other anti-oil vested interests https://zeihan.com/albertas-tryst-with-destiny/ https://zeihan.com/albertas-tryst-with-destiny/: Alberta oil has constantly been blocked, stalled, and given added friction from leaving Alberta by neighboring territories. Keystone xl pipeline just got axed by Biden and the transmountain pipeline was stalled for years by British Columbia. Makes me wonder how much of Calgary's downstream economic woes is an attributable result of these upstream anti-oil plays.

arcosdev 5y ago

Sounds like typical boom and bust Alberta to me. This could very likely be the last "bust" though.

nikanj 5y ago
That's what people have said every time there is a bust. And every time there is a boom, too, with the whole "this time it's different and won't crash"
- arcosdev 5y ago
  For the sake of my family living in Alberta, I hope that is the case and this is just a temporary condition, but with the way oil and gas is going and the terrible government running the show in AB right now, I am not very optimistic.
- klyrs 5y ago
  As long as their booms are fueled by oil, we're all better off if this is the last one.

MrDresden 5y ago

I was in a relationship with an Albertan between 2014-2016, and moved to Edmonton from Europe in early 2015 (had flown over a couple of times in the prior year). Even though the city was marketed as the "fun" city with all its events and festivals, I found it to be remarkably dead looking (architecturally cold concrete downtown, McMansions and overdeveloped cookie cutter cul de sacs everywhere). Then we took a trip to Calgary for a couple of days, and I saw an even less appealing place. Don't get me wrong, these places were filled with nice people, many which I miss having contact with. But I would not have been able to settle there permanently (architecturally cold cities, extreme overconsumption, focus on fossil fuels and more played a role).

throwaway222145 5y ago
Edmonton is the most depressing city I have ever been in. It was like walking into Silent Hill.
xmcqdpt2 5y ago
Edmonton is home to the second largest mall in North America https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Edmonton_Mall https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Edmonton_Mall yet Edmonton itself is only the 33rd largest city in NA. As someone who grew up in a dull commuter suburb and hated every minute of it, this ratio of mall size to population is not inspiring.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Having a large indoor area for people to congregate and entertain themselves in a location with very long and cold winters might not be comparable to having one in a location with milder weather.
  - Fricken 5y ago
    Living in Edmonton, I don't see much evidence of the mall apocalypse that is supposedly affecting the rest of North America.
  - 5y ago

cfcf14 5y ago

I lived and worked in Edmonton and Calgary for about 8 years before moving to London (UK) and I can confidently say that I have no intention of ever going back. To me, those two cities are exemplars for the concept of 'soul-less glass and steel altars to capitalism'. They're now even more desolate as millennials such as myself left for better opportunities. I also agree with other commenters that the politics there are toxic, and very much stuck in the past. I wish the best for everybody remaining there, hopefully they can transition to a more sustainable economic model and excise the regressive, entitled political culture that's sprung forth from decades of unbridled decadence.

GlennS 5y ago

Ill-informed opinion: I asked a colleague from the magical land of Canadia whether I should take a flight to London from Edmonton or Calgary after travelling through the Canadian Rockies. She said Edmonton was shit, so Calgary. As of 2019, Calgary was a kind of US-style car block city, except with nothing to do. Certainly not for tourists. I hope Edmonton isn't really worse, because zzzzz. I was interviewed by the local TV news when I tried to visit a tall building, which was closed. They do have a lovely park stretching along the river though. I think it'd be a pretty decent place to live if you had a bunch of friends to hang out with. And maybe loads of money too? That helps.

goodcanadian 5y ago
I grew up in Alberta. I am reasonably familiar with both Edmonton and Calgary. Neither is a terribly exciting city, but I would not say "Edmonton is shit." Really, I think they are more or less the same. Edmonton has an even nicer system of parks along the North Saskatchewan River, and isn't terrible for festivals and such in the summer. Calgary's main strength is its proximity to the Rocky mountains. I can't think of much in Calgary proper that I would recommend to tourists, except possibly the stampede. Edmonton has West Edmonton mall if that is your thing. YMMV.
thehappypm 5y ago
IMO it's a lot like Denver. Denver downtown is pretty boring, but there are lots of cool neighborhoods outside of downtown with some character and fun spots. Large, car-oriented, sprawling, flat. Oh, and access to some of the best hiking and skiing in the world.
skeeter2020 5y ago
Strong Calgary booster here though I'm originally from BC (~20 years ago). I was one of the economic migrants that caused the population to explode as were many (most?) of the people who moved here in that period. If you were voluntarily willing to pack-up and move across the country for work, demographically you were typically: young, educated and motivated (vs. historically it was desperate and motivated). Calgary still feels "small" for a million-plus people and very meritocratic. It has a neighbourly feel that is very Canadian-prairries, less than an hour to the mountains and not as cold as you might think (outside of February) due to chinooks. If you're looking for exciting cities I'd stay away from almost ALL Canadian and US locations, but if you're looking for a big cities that supports a lifestyle that's not urba-based, Calgary is pretty great. Everything my family does is either walking distance or a very short drive (I live in the NW beltline) yet I'm very close to all the outdoor-centric activies I love.

fleventynine 5y ago

I worked in Calgary as a software engineer from 2000-2012 at various places, but never in big oil. At the time, a low cost of living, outdoor recreation opportunities, relatively young and healthy population, and good wages for engineers (compared to the rest of Canada) kept me there. I left for a big-tech job in the bay area, but I still miss elements of the Calgary lifestyle. In particular, the insanely low mortgage payments compared to wages led to a feeling that I could feasibly bootstrap a business without taking a huge financial risk.

pixelgeek 5y ago

> Calgary is now searching for ways to fix a problem that has left the city’s downtown – which already had a reputation as a lifeless collection of skyscrapers filled with people who clear out at the end of every workday The situation isn't unique to Calgary. It is the same in a lot of other urban centres (like Oakland) where there was no development focus on anything other than head offices and high rises. Compare Calgary to Vancouver (I live in C and spent 20+ years in V) where there was some effort to make the downtown a more livable space. I think the downtown here in Calgary is ghastly. Loud. Ugly. Who would want to spend any time in it? I used to walk around downtown Vancouver all the time. Never do that here. For decades the governments running Calgary, and Alberta, have not really given a shit about anyone other than large businesses (and their campaign funding) and those businesses have done what they normally do and moved elsewhere once things got tough or they got a better deal. And, as usual, taxpayers and residents are left with the remains once the party is over and businesses have moved on. In this case the city has an unliveable downtown filled with skyscrapers no-one wants to move into.

voisin 5y ago
Am I incorrect in thinking Vancouver’s downtown is still extremely low density relative to Calgary’s downtown? And I understand it was only fairly recently that Calgary approved residential / multi-use zoning units core?
- katbyte 5y ago
  Vancouver is far more dense, google an arial image of each to compare. There are suburbs of Vancouver with density equal to Calgary it looks like.
- pixelgeek 5y ago
  As @katbyte mentions, Vancouver downtown is very dense. The city had a very progressive urban planning department until about 2007 or so and it shows. I am not as familiar with the downtown as it exists now but the downtown was, when I lived there, very different than almost any downtown I have been in in North America with the possible exception of San Fran.

pycal 5y ago

I grew up in Calgary, and after spending the last 14 years in Toronto I have decided to move back. Income taxes are way lower in Alberta than Ontario; moving my remote-ok tech job to calgary was equivalent to getting a five-figure raise. Cycling in Toronto is a life-threatening activity, and Calgary has something like 150km of paved urban pathway. The politics are toxic in both places. Calgary is just quieter and I like that. I’m sick of listening to construction, sirens, street car clattering, and apt hvac systems. The water in Calgary looks appetizing - I spent a lot of time in the outer harbour in Toronto and am acutely aware of the water quality advisories. The shoreline of Toronto’s harbour front is ugly as sin. Chunks of the Gardiner is falling on peoples’ cars, and is a source of horrible, dementia-inducing noise pollution. Anyone with a balcony in Fort York or City Place probably used it for the first time during the pandemic, and otherwise is just their storage locker. Calgary has a stunning river that glows with mineralized rocky mountain water, and you can walk or cycle along it for exercise because it isn’t so oversubscribed as the pan am path. Transit is terrible in both towns but living on the subway was great. I can afford a 1700sqft inner city calgary home with a garage and a yard for the price of a 900sqft 2bed downtown toronto condo. The recreation opportunities in Calgary are year round, but in Toronto I felt like the onot things to do in the winter were restaurants and the ago. The food scene in Toronto is amazing. I miss sushi. The music scene too. But Calgary has world class examples of all this, and this stuff is a lower priority than it once was. Everything is 8 minutes away from me in Calgary. Try getting anywhere in 8 minutes in Toronto, what with the choking traffic, and the fact that all your friends have to move to orangeville and whitby because of rising prices. Both cities have incredible energy. I was in calgary for the red mile, and at yonge and dundas when the raps won. Calgary for me is a better place on balance.

xtracto 5y ago
> I can afford a 1700sqft inner city calgary home with a garage and a yard for the price of a 900sqft 2bed downtown toronto condo. I thought that Canada used the metric system. You and also the article expresses measurements in imperial units. Is that still used in Canada?
- kingofpandora 5y ago

michaelje 5y ago

I live downtown. You can see my building on that map. I moved to Canada in the infamous March of 2020. Downtown is sterile. A nice cafe or more likely a nice restaurant will pop up - but there is nothing around it. In Summer, walking a few blocks is fine. In Winter…… There are tech jobs, as the many government funded programs will promote - but it’s a drop in the ocean compared to the big cities. And none of the majors, really. I feel like I’m just biding time here now. When this lease is up, I expect to move to Vancouver, or maybe even Toronto. Taxes are slightly lower, sure. But you’re paying for that, even if indirectly.

FredPret 5y ago
Toronto sure has a lot to offer. Every neighbourhood downtown has its charms. But you pay for it, and then some.
WalterGR 5y ago
Downtown is sterile. A nice cafe or more likely a nice restaurant will pop up - but there is nothing around it. In Summer, walking a few blocks is fine. In Winter…… In its defense (I have no horse in this fight) lots of downtowns in the US are like that. They’re places to work that empty out at 5pm. Seattle comes to mind. Maybe Chicago and St. Louis? It’s been a long time since I’ve been to those, though...

rakejake 5y ago

I interned at UCalgary during Summer of 2016 as part of an international students exchange program. After the initial euphoria of being in a foreign land, I felt pretty much the same way as many other posters here. The people are exceedingly polite, the infrastructure is top notch (compared to most American cities I have visited) and feels like it was built assuming 130% capacity or something. The public transit was free downtown. The city govt was clearly doing a bit of work. Yet I felt the downtown area very lacking. Calgary on the whole had a very uncanny valley feel to it. Apart from the weather I don't have any complaints about the city. The nature and recreation is world class, Indian food is aplenty, the people are incredibly nice and accommodating yet I wouldn't go back. I guess it just wasn't for me.

ghaff 5y ago
Honestly, what you say is pretty typical for a lot of North American cities--and elsewhere as well. (Although many/most don't have the nature and recreation options.) There's nothing wrong with them necessarily. But unless you specifically value living in a city for some walkable access to a few restaurants, markets, etc. there usually are not a lot of unique entertainment and other options that aren't available pretty much everywhere that isn't very rural.
- pixelgeek 5y ago
  > Honestly, what you say is pretty typical for a lot of North American cities Not the infrastructure. Almost every American city I visited looked like it was falling apart.
  - rakejake 5y ago
    Yes, I found this very surprising. Calgary is as car centric as any average American city and yet they had amazing footpaths and shining public transit. To be fair, their infrastructure is much newer and they don't really have a crime/homeless problem
- rakejake 5y ago
  I don't think so. I'm talking about the vibe of a city. Iirc pg wrote an article long back about the vibe of a city. Vibe is a bit amorphous but I tend to think of vibe as a condensed view of what the city is about, a function of political tendencies, culture (music, sports, tech, entrepreneurship etc) and general friendliness. Job opportunities and decent social life are usually necessary conditions. Major cities like SF and NYC usually have all of them, provided you can afford living there. But a city like San Antonio cannot offer everything, so if you don't dig Texan/Hispanic culture and don't like basketball, the grand river walk is not going to make you want to live there.

rfwhyte 5y ago

One thing the article didn't mention, that at least I think plays a factor, is for whatever reason, no matter how long their properties sit vacant and empty, commercial landlords never seem to lower their lease rates. For some esoteric reason I don't fully understand that likely is some combination of taxes, capital gains and market pricing, commercial landlords seem to think its more advantageous to let properties sit empty for years, than in it is to lower their rates to see them occupied. Where I live in Vancouver there are busy commercial neighborhoods that have had literally dozens of storefronts sit empty for years because no one can afford the leases and the landlords won't lower their rates. It just seems to me, an admittedly unsophisticated commercial real estate neophyte, that the market for commercial real-estate seems to be fundamentally detached from market forces, likely due to the creation of taxation and regulation regime that provides incentives for commercial landlords to hold vacant properties rather than lower rates and if we as a society want to fix this, we need to look frameworks that are in place that make it a better deal for commercial landlords to sit on vacant properties than react to market forces and lower rates.

oystersauce 5y ago

Calgary is an interesting city at an interesting time. It’s ripe for a new industry, but I’m not sure simply catering to tech is the way to go. There’s high talent, high education, and cheap office space. Housing is also affordable as far as large Canadian cities go. Like many comments in here, I’m tempted to move back there to take advantage of that.

rajnathani 5y ago

A key point mentioned in the end of the post: > To bring more people downtown, several office towers have already been turned into apartments, and the federal government has set aside $300-million to convert commercial properties across Canada to rental housing.