LinkedIn • May 7, 2025

by David Wallach, President and CEO of Barclay Street Real Estate

We arrived in Calgary in December 1998. Weather-wise, it was not the best time of year to immigrate, going from +25°C to -18°C in just a few hours. Immigrating with three young kids, our first goal was to buy the necessary clothes for them, as well as for my wife and me. One of the first places we visited was The Bay, both the Downtown and Chinook locations.

We were extremely relieved to find coats, warm pants, long johns, gloves, scarves, and more. We were also glad to find other household necessities such as linens, towels, a kettle, kitchenware and many other items we needed as a family of five. After all, we had immigrated with just eight suitcases.

My office, for the past 25+ years, has been located two blocks west of The Bay Downtown. I have visited The Bay in downtown Calgary many times over the past 25 years; however, it was mostly to use it as a passageway to the downtown +15 system in winter. Walking through the main or second floor of Calgary’s Downtown Bay felt exactly the same as it did 26 years ago. It was like stepping back in time, especially when compared to other modern retailers.

What is the connection between The Bay’s story and Calgary’s and other North American cities’ downtown office vacancy challenges?

If you don’t change, adapt, invest, innovate, and modernise your downtown office properties, you may face the same consequences as The Bay. High vacancies will force landlords to offer greater concessions, accept lower base rents and bear higher maintenance costs. All of these pressures lead to a decrease in property value.

With growing pressure from employers to get staff back into the office, just look at Google’s decision last week, the properties that will win lease renewals, expansions, new head leases and extensions will be those offering the best amenities.

At the 2023 Real Estate Forum, when “return to office” was still uncertain, Scott Hutcheson, Executive Chair of Aspen Properties, addressed the issue. I quote: “We are not competing any longer against other landlords, we are competing with the kitchen table and need to provide a comfortable, exciting and similar environment.”

Aspen Properties became a leader in office space by embracing this new reality. They invested in modernising their Edison and Ampersand properties with innovation and out-of-the-box thinking, elevating the amenities to a level never before seen in Western Canada, perhaps even the entire country.

Today, we are seeing other landlords begin to follow their lead.

Last September, we hosted the TCN Worldwide Real Estate Services conference in Calgary, with over 80 commercial real estate brokers from the U.S., Australia, Mexico, Greece, and Romania. Aspen Properties was kind enough (and proud) to include the Ampersand as part of our city tour.

The visitors were beyond impressed.  They took thousands of photos on their phones and were all discussing how they could convince landlords in their own markets to follow such forward-thinking initiatives.

In summary: If you own a downtown property and want to see occupancy, rental rates, and property value rise, you must modernise. Think creatively about how to make your tenants’ employees enjoy the time they spend in your building. Invest. Innovate. And reap the rewards.