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badc0ffee said:
I have a memory of seeing White Men Can't Jump there. I think the second tower was under construction at the time.
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Famous Players closed the Palace when it opened Bankers Hall.

For a while, the Globe (know as Towne back in the day) had a Red theatre showing mass market movies and a Blue theatre showing porn. Every few months they would swap the physical locations - likely for cleaning. 12 year old me saw Splash (with Tom Hanks) in the Red theatre and saw my Art Teacher in line for the Blue.
 
darwink said:
Let’s do a theatre roundup:
Palliser Square 2 —> Vertigo Theatre
Bankers Hall —> Data Centre
Watermark (might have been a data centre to begin with) —> paper record room (ComputerShare)
Imperial Oil 9 —> ? Food Court
Grand —> Grand (currently closed)
Palace —> Palace
Eau Claire 6 —> to be demolished
Towne 1 --> closed
Towne 2 --> Globe 2 —> survives for now
Barron/Uptown 1 --> 2 —> 1 --> demolished
Calgary Place 2 --> 3 --> Metropolitan Centre
Hitching Post --> Retail
Capitol --> Retail

Were there others?

So Eau Claire opens out competes the other theatres then shuts down itself. This might be leaving downtown with the fewest theatres in a century.
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I don't remember a theatre at Watermark (nee Western Gas Tower).
 
jianxia15 said:
renx.ca

Calgary's office market is looking up, for a lot of reasons

Calgary’s long-challenged office market is seeing a glimmer of hope these days with tightening availability and steadily rising rental rates, according to a new report by Savills.
renx.ca renx.ca
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Judging by this mentioning the West as having the highest vacancy I assume we're going to continue to see conversions in that section of downtown which actually bodes pretty well for the city's investment in street scaping and the riverfront improvements that should be coming at some point in the next five years.

The mention of a lack of a lot of office space being available in higher class buildings does make me wonder if we are closer to a new office development. All it takes is for a CEO to says, we need class A/AA on a large scale to get people back in the office.
 
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CalgaryTiger said:
Judging by this mentioning the West as having the highest vacancy I assume we're going to continue to see conversion in that section of downtown which actually bodes pretty well for the city's investment in street scaping and the riverfront improvements that should be coming at some point in the next five years.

The mention of a lack of a lot of office space being available in higher class buildings does make me wonder if we are closer to a new office development. All it takes is for a CEO to says, we need class A/AA on a large scale to get people back in the office.
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Or another full tower renovation. At some point Western Canadian Place will be back in the mix, as will Nova/NEXEN. I think Nova/NEXEN would work as a huge conference hotel.
 
CalgaryTiger said:
The mention of a lack of a lot of office space being available in higher class buildings does make me wonder if we are closer to a new office development. All it takes is for a CEO to says, we need class A/AA on a large scale to get people back in the office.
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The Q2 2024 Avison Young vacancy report adds a bit more colour here to what's going on. https://www.avisonyoung.ca/documents/d/calgary/calgary-office-market-report-q2-2024-final

From the graphs below the trend continues to not really be about overall growth in office demand - in fact, overall absorption was negative in this report. The shift continues to be about relocating to the better quality office. The thing keeping the vacancy rate lower than otherwise in the lower quality offices are conversions - even with all that work, it's still at 25 to 40% for the A, B, and C classes.

I am sure you can always make a case for a one-off (i.e. a uniquely powerful CEO is convinced a new office is the solution for what ails them and pushes it through), but it would take some wild decisions to get there. The first article mentioned AA rent at ~$40 / sqft now - is that anywhere close to the cost of construction?
1722969801221.png

1722969771265.png


What will be interesting is if there's not large-scale change in this story. Some older, worse quality buildings have been sitting nearly vacant for a decade.... is there any chance that any of them will fill up in the next decade? Or the one after that? I am very curious what an office property portfolio is estimating the value is of assets that have had negative cash-flow for a decade and no feasible path to a positive cash-flow for the next 20 to 30 years.
 
CBBarnett said:
I am very curious what an office property portfolio is estimating the value is of assets that have had negative cash-flow for a decade and no feasible path to a positive cash-flow for the next 20 to 30 years.
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There were transactions in the last 10 in Edmonton that were in that boat.

globalnews.ca

4 downtown Edmonton office towers sold for $160M less than their value 7 years ago - Edmonton | Globalnews.ca

In March, a single firm sold four downtown office towers facing vacancy problems at steep discounts in Alberta's capital city.
globalnews.ca globalnews.ca

"Last month, HSBC Bank Place on 101 Street sold for $35 million. Enbridge Place on 104 Street sold for $25 million. The HSBC building on 106 Street went for just over $12 million. The Milner Building just off Jasper Avenue at 104 Street sold for $7.5 million."

Combined, the four buildings dropped in value by more than $160 million in less than a decade."
1722970833215.png
 
darwink said:
There were transactions in the last 10 in Edmonton that were in that boat.

globalnews.ca

4 downtown Edmonton office towers sold for $160M less than their value 7 years ago - Edmonton | Globalnews.ca

In March, a single firm sold four downtown office towers facing vacancy problems at steep discounts in Alberta's capital city.
globalnews.ca globalnews.ca

"Last month, HSBC Bank Place on 101 Street sold for $35 million. Enbridge Place on 104 Street sold for $25 million. The HSBC building on 106 Street went for just over $12 million. The Milner Building just off Jasper Avenue at 104 Street sold for $7.5 million."

Combined, the four buildings dropped in value by more than $160 million in less than a decade."
View attachment 586259
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Fascinating, thanks for sharing. I don't think I will ever wrap my head around property real estate at this scale though lol :)

Seller: hey I got this office building - it hasn't made money for a decade and will lose millions in the future. Can I get $90M for it?​

Buyer: no way - your useless, obsolete and permanent money losing properties are worth only $25M, tops.​
​
It seems to me that these buildings are destined to end up being priced for their land, discounted by their conversion or demolition costs.
 
CBBarnett said:
Fascinating, thanks for sharing. I don't think I will ever wrap my head around property real estate at this scale though lol :)

Seller: hey I got this office building - it hasn't made money for a decade and will lose millions in the future. Can I get $90M for it?​

Buyer: no way - your useless, obsolete and permanent money losing properties are worth only $25M, tops.​
​
It seems to me that these buildings are destined to end up being priced for their land, discounted by their conversion or demolition costs.
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Trying to catch the falling knife is gambling, that's for sure. Those may have been fair prices given land costs and leases in place or there may have been some gambling going on.
 
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