Nexen Tower: A Bold Opportunity & Challenge
The first 25 years of the 21st century have been interesting, to say the least, for Calgary’s downtown core. The century came in with a bang with several new office towers by internationally renowned architects – Bow Tower, Eighth Avenue Place, Brookfield Place and 707 Fifth (Manulife Place). Also, TD Square, Eaton Centre and Devonian Gardens were redeveloped, creating a unique, mega 2.5 block integrated indoor shopping, food hall and garden experience. In addition, East Village’s redevelopment as downtown’s east side bedroom community finally commenced. And of course, the new Central Library and National Music Centre, added to downtown’s appeal as a place to work, learn and play.
The Nexen Tower is currently entirely empty waiting to be repurposed.
However, by 2015, the demand for office space decreased due to the collapse of the oil and gas market which was further decreased by “the COVID effect” i.e. the increase in the work- from-home opportunities, especially for office workers. Calgary’s office vacancy space rose to 12+ million square feet or about 30% of the total office space.
At the same time, downtown’s residential development was booming with new residential towers in East Village, West End and the Beltline.
In 2018, TELUS Sky became Calgary biggest mixed-use building adding 326 new homes along with 420,000 of office space along the 7th Avenue transit corridor in the heart of downtown. A few blocks away the Hotel Germain project, included not only the hotel, but office space and luxury condos.
Yes, downtown Calgary was slowly evolving from being primarily a place to work to becoming a place to live. However, because of the construction of 6 million square feet of new office space from 2012 to 2019, six-million square feet of downtown office spaces built 40+ years ago became obsolete, creating a huge opportunity to create more places for people to live right in the core.
Office Conversion Incentives
City of Calgary planners and politicians recognized there was a unique opportunity to convert the old office space at the edge of the downtown core to meet the growing demand to live downtown, but to do so would require incentives. The Downtown Office Conversion Program was launched in 2021 with $153 million in incentives. It has been a huge success with 11 projects (completed or under construction) adding 1,500 new homes. The program also includes incentives for conversion of obsolete office buildings into hotel and post-secondary schools. To date, one office to hotel project has been approved.
Note: For the past 25 years, Calgary has ranked as one of the most livable cities in the world, in some years out-ranking even Vancouver as the most livable city in North America. The opportunity to transform Calgary’s downtown into an attractive place to live while challenging is part of the City’s “Greater Downtown Plan.”
Nexen Challenge / Opportunity
One of the more challenging and transformative office conversion opportunities is the Nexen Building. This 37-storey, iconic stainless steel clad tower sits empty in a strategic block on the west end of the downtown core. It is not only five times larger than any of the current office conversions, but it is a more modern building with a unique triangular floorplate that makes conversion to residential more complex. But it has incredible potential to be one of the most transformative downtown projects of the next quarter of the 21st century.
In mid-November, I received an email from Perkins&Will with the subject line “A Speculative Vision to Ignite Calgary’s Downtown Transformation.” In fact, it was a speculative discussion paper on how the Nexen Tower could be converted into a vertical mixed-use building that would include a post-secondary school, student housing and a community gathering space.
FYI: Perkins&Will is a global collective of architects and urban design professionals headquartered in Chicago, with an office in Calgary. They have designed buildings and public spaces around the world, including student housing at universities in Victoria, Vancouver, San Francisco and Austin. In Toronto, they designed The Daphne Cockwell Health Sciences Complex for the Toronto Metropolitan University that includes a residence for 330 students.
The paper correctly outlines how the Nexen Tower is unique in that it sits next to the recently renovated Century Gardens and is bordered on one side by an LRT station and another by 8th Avenue SW which is targeted to become a more pedestrian corridor linking the west end of downtown to Olympic Plaza. It is also next to 8th Street SW, which is the pedestrian link from 17th Avenue SW to the Bow River Pathway and for Beltline residents to the LRT. Plus, it is where many of the old office building conversions are happening and could serve as the gateway to the indoor +15 walkway for them.
Bold Vision
Perkins&Will’s bold vision for the Nexen Tower is to have about half of the building become student housing which would certainly animate the nearby streets, as students come and go at all times of the day and night, seven days a week. Perhaps the student housing could become a hostel in the summer when many of the students are not in school.
FYI: One of the reasons Montreal’s city centre is so vibrant at all times of the day is the number of students who learn, live and play there. Montreal has a population of 185,000 post-secondary students, including 25,000 international students, who consider the downtown their urban playground with its nightlife and festivals.
About a third of the building would become a post-secondary campus, possibly in partnership with an existing Calgary school (University of Calgary already owns and operates a building on the corner of 8th Ave and 8th Street SW) or it could be an opportunity to attract a new satellite international school to Calgary.
FYI: Remember - the UPCs promised a new post-secondary school for downtown Calgary in the last election.
The bottom three floors of the tower would be converted into public spaces, with shops, cafes, live music venue. There is also an annex building on the northwest corner of 7th Ave and 7th St SW that would be ideal for a cineplex, perhaps the home of the Calgary International Film Festival. Or could it become a City Centre Community Association building, offering classes, meeting spaces and multi-purpose gym.
Will&Perkin’s speculative paper also proposed the idea of sky garden in the middle of the building and another on the roof. While this might be nice to have, I expect it would just add to conversion cost without adding much value.
Their idea is to redevelop the building so it will be integrated with the park, including the glass pavilion on the southwest corner that was once a tropical garden (like the old Devonian Gardens) into a popular community gathering place for those living nearby of all ages and backgrounds not just the students.
The concept drawings also include a Transit Hub at the corner of 8th St and 7th Ave SW and a Bike Hub to provide secure parking using the underground parkade. Not a bad idea, given I have had two locked bikes stolen from downtown over the past 4 years.
Creating a downtown campus?
Ideas on how to make our downtown more vibrant are a dime a dozen. I distinctly recall one of the pillars of the Calgary Downtown Association’s first strategic plan back in the late ’80s called for attracting a major post-secondary school to locate in our downtown.
Since then, Bow Valley College has doubled in size, the University of Calgary has students in both their 8th and 8th site and W.R. Castell Building (i.e. old Central Library). There are 10+ other post-secondary schools already in the Downtown West neighbourhood including the Visual College of Art & Design and several ESL schools. It is not as far-fetched as some might think that the Nexen Tower could serve as the anchor for a post-secondary campus on the west side of Calgary’s downtown core.
None of Perkins&Will’s ideas have been tested to see if they are economically feasible. And yes, there many questions left to be answered.
Are one or more post-secondary schools interested in locating downtown and if so, could they pay market rents?
Would the City be willing to allow the owners of Nexen to double dip into the Office Conversion Program i.e. receive funding from both the office to residential conversion for the student housing and for the post-secondary school component of the repurposing?
Would the City be willing to go above its current maximum grant of $15 million per project?
Would the UCPs be willing to fund part to the conversion as part of their commitment to attracting a post-secondary school to Calgary’s downtown?
Would an international school be interested in establishing a satellite school in downtown Calgary, one that would not cannibalize students from existing campuses?
Last Word
The challenge is how to foster a partnership between the building owners, the Province, the City and one or more post-secondary schools with a shared vision on how to integrate Nexen Tower, Century Gardens and the LRT station the anchor for a thriving urban village on the west side of Calgary’s downtown core.
FYI: The most likely scenario is the University of Calgary’s entire Environmental Design Department moves to the Nexen Tower as the anchor tennant, creating synergy with the 8th and 8th building it leases across the street.
Link to Perkins+Will Speculative Vision to Ignite Calgary’s Downtown Transformation
Learn more about Nexen also Nova Tower and Dwotntown West:
Reshaping Calgary’s Downtown a a place to live
Nova Building: A New Lease On Life?
Calgary: Is Downtown West the new East Village?
Downtown West: A Quiet Evolution