Office tower shuffle in downtown Calgary

Gary Park

for Petroleum News

One of oldest oil and gas office towers in downtown Calgary is a gaining a new tenant, with Canadian Natural Resources moving into the Shell Canada Center in 2025 and 2026.

Built in 1977, the high rise has total space of more than 640,000 square feet and will be entirely occupied by CNR. Shell vacated the 32-storey landmark last year.

The shuffle will temporarily take two large chunks of office space off the market said Mason Lam, senior vice-president at Jones Lang LaSalle Inc., a Calgary-based real estate services firm. Lam said the moves could be a win for downtown Calgary as it tries to mitigate a current vacancy rate estimated at almost 27%.

The city is also viewing a number of office-to-residential conversions that are scheduled to occur over the next couple of years.

Lam said that because of a big surge expected in Calgary's population there are going to be more corporate start-ups and more people looking for work in the downtown core.

--GARY PARK