Underused downtown office building being converted to U of C classrooms

The University of Calgary's campus is expanding into 801 Seventh Avenue S.W., formerly known as the Nexen Building, in Calgary's downtown — after the office tower has sat virtually empty for about six years.

The university's School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape is aiming to make the space its new home by January 2026, transforming 180,000 square feet across the tower and the annex building into classrooms, studios, labs and other teaching and research spaces.

"We're bursting at the seams because we've just created our new undergraduate degree, a bachelor of design in city innovation, and so we desperately need more space," said John Brown, the school's dean.

"In the same way that a medical school is located in a hospital, a design school needs to be downtown, [and] not just located downtown but integrated into the workings of downtown."

The atrium of the silver, 37-storey building was recently renovated. It will host public lectures and events focused on city building.

The office space hasn't seen much traffic from workers since mid-2019, when Nexen moved all of its employees to The Bow building.

Thom Mahler, the city's director of downtown strategy, said he hopes this project will help breathe life into this area of downtown.

"[The building] was a significant part of our skyline for many years, and when it was emptied out, it was pretty devastating for that part of our downtown core," he said. 

"By this move, we're really creating a bit of a campus environment, which is fantastic for student experience. And for the neighborhood to have all that activity within this area is just a huge benefit."

The conversion is being funded up to $9 million through the city's Downtown Post-Secondary Institution Incentive Program.

The initiative is meant to encourage Calgary's post-secondary schools to develop their presence downtown while putting the city's underutilized office spaces to good use.

Once complete, the expansion will allow the faculty to relocate all its activities to the new location, while freeing up 800 spaces on the main campus and potentially increasing its enrolment capacity to 1,200 students in the coming years.

Revitalizing the downtown core

According to commercial real estate broker Avison Young, Calgary downtown's office vacancy rate sits close to 25 per cent.

The city has been trying to tackle its high downtown vacancy by converting empty offices to mostly housing spaces through an incentive program launched in 2021.

Mahler noted the location, right by a CTrain platform, is a great way to get thousands of students to the core and cultivate a vibrant culture downtown.

"When you look at cities like Montreal or Toronto … you see the presence of post-secondaries in a much greater presence than we have in Calgary," he said.

Institutions including Bow Valley College, the University of Lethbridge and the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology also have a presence in Calgary's downtown. But Mahler said this new partnership with the University of Calgary is a significant move to revitalizing downtown.

He noted that expanding university operations in downtown will also present more opportunities to get the area bustling.

"Certainly [the] School of Architecture lends itself to [business opportunities in the area] like art supply stores, graphic stores, computer stores, other types of food services that maybe operate more in the evening, not just at lunch," he said.

Calgary's downtown will act as a 'living lab'

In 2018, the faculty opened the City Building Design Lab on Seventh Avenue S.E., across from city hall.

That move was "transformative," Brown said, noting it underscored the importance of bringing the school's operations downtown.

Once the Nexen Building conversion is complete, the school will take over eight floors of the tower and two floors of the annex.

The downtown location opens up many opportunities, Brown said, and the students will be able to use their central campus as a kind of "living lab." 

"Our students work most of the time on real projects that are related to the city, with community groups and with non-profits," he said. 

"We're actually going to be close enough that we're gonna be able to have a kind of professional impact [on the city] as well."