Formerly vacant office space transformed into downtown Calgary apartments

Calgary's latest office-to-residential conversion is now move-in ready—on one of the city's busiest downtown streets.

Calgary’s latest office-to-residential conversion is complete and already welcoming in residents.

The Loft, located at 744 Fourth Ave S.W., was formerly known as the KJM Building.

It’s been vacant for four years — at least, until earlier this month.

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“The appeal here is we’re in the heart of downtown on a great street, and an intersection with lots of activity going on,” Zen Residential’s Chris Hollinger said. “We’re hoping for full occupancy by Jan. 1, and it should home about 90 residents.”

The 55,000 square-feet of vacant office space is now 56 units on 11 floors: studios, one-bedrooms and two-bedrooms.

The transformation is part of the city’s Downtown Calgary Development Incentive.

To date, the program has transformed more than 2.68 million square feet of underused office space into 2,628 new homes through 21 approved office conversion projects.

That’s good news as downtown office vacancy rates hover around 30 per cent.

“This is our fourth completion for residential, and we had the one hotel completion as well,” director of downtown strategy Thom Mahler said. “We have two more projects that we will be completing this month, and a pipeline of projects that are dependent on timing and construction.”

Since launching in 2021, the city says the program has generated $4 in private investment for every $1 of public funding.

It put $4.1 million into The Loft.

“Our goal was to remove six-million square feet of office space, and by doing so, increase the value of the remaining office space, which would restore the property value,” Mahler said. “It just so happened that the housing shortage coincided.”

Mahler believes the conversions are revitalizing downtown by improving mid-tier supply and boosting economic activity.

One housing expert says it’s a small part of a larger plan to alleviate housing stress — and it seems to slowly be working.

“We’ve increased supply I believe 800 times compared to the pathetic trickle-down kind of solutions that we were providing for decades,” University of Calgary architecture, planning and landscape professor Sasha Tsenkova said. “The momentum needs to be sustained.”