A deal in in the works for new owners to purchase the NOVA Tower, one of Calgary’s (Canada’s) signature downtown office towers.

Speculation is they will try to convert this 37 floor office building into a residential tower, but that would be a huge challenge given its size and floor plate.

The building has a razor blade edge on the 8th Ave & 7th St corner.

The floor plate is 17,000 square feet which is difficult to subdivide into residential spaces while still meeting the building code for a residential building. I am told the ideal floor plate for a residential tower is about 7,500 square feet. The tower has 600,000+ square feet, which means about 600 new homes could be created, as well as some space for café and restaurant and a fitness studio.

Perhaps even an urban grocer, maybe a cinema, given the closure of the Eau Claire cinemas next year a downtown cinema complex could work. FYI: It comes with 343 parking stalls, so not everyone is going to get one!

The site is ideal for urban living, with the 7th Avenue Transit Corridor beside it and easy walking distance to Stephen Avenue, Olympic Plaza Arts District, Shaw Millennium Park and the Bow River Promenade. It would also have +15 access for those heading to work on those cold winter days.

I expect, the City of Calgary will be very keen to see this building converted to a residential tower, as its size and quality would make it the anchor they are looking for to help shift the downtown core’s west side into an urban residential village. And it would go a long way to meeting the City’s goal of removing 6 million square feet of downtown office space.

Link: Downtown Calgary Development Incentive Plan

The lobby was like a tropical oasis, much like downtown’s Devonian Gardens.

Unique Design

For many Calgary architects, the NOVA building is one of their favourite pieces of architecture in the city, and one of the best example of late 20th century post-modern office architecture in Canada. It was purpose built to be the head office of NOVA, An Alberta Corporation with the design architect being Fredrick Valentine of Calgary’s J.H. Cook Architects and Engineers.

It was the first building to break away from Calgary’s traditional rectangular, big box shaped office buildings that dominated the city’s skyline at the time.

FYI: I was told one of the reasons for the plethora of boxy office towers is the dominance of pragmatic thinking in Calgary’s oil patch and development community. The box is the perfect shape for a building to maximize capacity for staff and other operations – no wasted space. And why would you taper a building at the top, like the wedding cake designs of the early 20th century, when you can get the highest rents for the top floors. It is a case of function always trumping form in Calgary’s urban design thinking in the 20th century.

The NOVA building is distinctive with shiny stainless-steel façade, that looks as good today as it did when it was first built. It is unique in that one side is at a 45-degree angle to street grid to permit more sunlight to shine on Century Gardens. The sharp shiny edge to the building creates a dramatic pedestrian entrance, which has given it the nickname “The Blade” for its knife-like edge.

Its shape caused it to act like an airfoil deflecting the predominantly westerly winds along 8th Avenue in a manner that causes the wind to whistle under certain conditions.

The building’s interior included a tropical garden court and the popular Green Street Café on the +15-level looking out onto the park for several decades. The Café with its contemporary California cuisine was not only a popular lunch spot during the week but attracted a crowd for its Sunday Brunch. It would be great if the redeveloped tower had a fun restaurant with a great Weekend Brunch that could be the catalyst for more downtown vitality on the weekends.

There was also a annex building at the corner of 7th Ave and 7th Street SW, linked to the tower by a +15 and +30 bridge which included a staff cafeteria, auditorium and loading docks.

The Nova building’s annex building on the northwest corner of 7th Ave and 7th St SW.

Unique History

The 37-storey building cost $70 million and was designed specifically to accommodate NOVA’s growing head office workforce when it opened in 1982. NOVA occupied the building from 1982 until its merger in 1998 with TransCanada Pipeline to create the 4th largest pipeline in North America with 6,000 employees. After the merger, the petrochemical side of the old NOVA operations moved to Pittsburgh and the pipeline operations was integrated with TransCanada Pipelines leaving the NOVA head office building redundant.

In 2000 Nexen another oil and gas company moved its headquarters to the building. Nexen was purchased by CNOOC Ltd. (Chinese state-owned corporation) in 2012 and gradually reduced its workforce to a point where it didn’t need the entire building. In 2019 CNOOC moved to the BOW Tower leasing eight floors from Cenovus, leaving the NOVA/Nexen building empty.

“NOVA Gate” by Toronto artist Kosso Eloul consisting of three stainless steel rectangles stacked together to create a passageway or gate at the 7th Ave and 7th Street SW entrance to the building.

Last Word

In many ways the NOVA Tower was the Bow Tower of its time with its bold architectural statement and purpose built for a major Calgary corporation. Other similarities include, its move to the edge of Calgary’s downtown office district and its contemporary public artwork welcoming visitors to the building. It will be interesting to see what the new owners have in mind for the next chapter in its evolution.