City cuts ribbon on first office-to-hotel conversion project downtown
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City officials were joined Thursday by representatives of Concord Hospitality, PBA Group of Companies and the Calgary Hotels Association to cut the ribbon on Element Calgary Downtown by Westin, a 226-suite hotel at 833 4th Avenue S.W.
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The property was previously the Canadian Centre, a 12-storey downtown office building that was vacated in 2022. The Canadian Centre was built in 1982 and served for many years as the home of Mount Royal College before it relocated to its present campus site in Lincoln Park.
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Shortly afterward, PBA Group, a local real estate firm, acquired the building, with the goal of converting it into a sustainable hotel.
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The new hotel boasts 226 suites and two culinary offerings, including a ground-level cafe and a rooftop lounge and restaurant.
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The project is a 'shining example' of adaptive reuse to fuel economic growth, Phillips added.
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'Just months ago, this was a vacant office tower,' she said. 'Like many buildings in the Calgary downtown core, it sat empty, but full of potential. Today, we can see what this potential looks like fully realized.'
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The conversion of 170,000 sq. ft. of former office space was made possible thanks to $9.9 million from the city's downtown development incentive program, which provides successful applicants up to $60 per square foot of convertible space to support conversion costs.
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The incentive program is a component of the city's downtown strategy, which seeks to revitalize vacant or underused office buildings into more active uses, including residential dwellings, commercial operations, or post-secondary satellite campuses.
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Council approved the initial $200-million strategy in 2021, in response to downtown's worsening office vacancy rate. According to CBRE's figures from the end of 2024, the vacancy rate is currently hovering around 30 per cent.
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At Thursday's event, Mayor Jyoti Gondek said since the downtown strategy was put into practice, the city has approved or launched more than 20 conversion projects to stimulate the city's core, particularly in the west end.
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