It is a staggeringly ambitious plan. Given the situation, it had to be.
When the economy started slumping in 2015, office vacancies in downtown Calgary began to climb. By 2020, the vacancy rate was sitting at over 30 per cent — about 14 million square feet of office space sat empty.
The value of office buildings in the city’s core had plummeted by more than two-thirds over that period, gutting the city’s property tax base and creating a revenue crisis at city hall.
