On a Tuesday morning, Sebastian Villarroel steps out of his three bedroom apartment in a building that once hummed with fluorescent lights and filing cabinets. He’s a young professional, and he can afford to live downtown Calgary. That sentence alone would have been unthinkable five years ago.
Today, those same concrete corridors that echoed with bad coffee and boardroom meetings are filling up with the sound of keys jingling, dinner simmering, and neighbours saying hello. A quiet but massive shift is reshaping the city’s skyline, and it’s bringing thousands of new downtown Calgary apartments into the heart of the core.
The Quiet Revolution Taking Over the Core
Calgary’s downtown office vacancy rate has been stubbornly stuck around 30 percent after years of oil and gas consolidation and the post-pandemic work from home shift. But instead of letting empty towers become monuments to a downturn, the city launched a bold office to residential conversion program in 2021, offering developers $75 per square foot to turn unused office floors into homes.
Nobody knew if anyone would bite. Then the applications flooded in. In just the first round, 15 building owners raised their hands. The program was so popular that by late 2023 the city had to hit pause after hitting its funding ceiling. The goal was to remove six million square feet of vacant space by 2031, and already the city is halfway there. What began as a desperate idea is now a model other Canadian cities are studying.
Six former office blocks have already been reborn as nearly 500 homes and more than 200 hotel rooms. Nine more projects have just been announced, part of 21 conversions that together will add over 2,600 new apartments downtown. For a place like 622 5th Avenue S.W., that means 32 new homes. For 510 5th Street S.W., it’s 128. The numbers are real, and they’re piling up fast.
A Building Gets a Second Act
Walking into one of these new spaces feels like stepping through a portal. The bones of the building are still there, but the soul is different. The HAT at 5th Avenue, a compact conversion of just 42,000 square feet, shows how even small towers can become 32 livable, light filled apartments. Across the street, the bigger 510 Fifth will deliver 128 homes. And a twin project called Atrium I & II will transform over 200,000 square feet into 180 apartments, right in the middle of it all.
“The rooms are spacious, the building itself is pretty organized,” Villarroel told CityNews. “I’m a young professional, being able to afford living in downtown. It’s great being able to work in downtown and live in downtown. Everything is close.” His enthusiasm captures what makes these conversions so powerful: they aren’t just about square footage, they’re about reviving a downtown living Calgary that feels attainable again.
“When we look at the results, $7 in total economic impact for every dollar invested here, there is bar none, no better economic opportunity for us as a council to continue to invest capital funding.”
Mayor Jeromy Farkas
More Than Just Four Walls
Beyond the front doors, the ripple effects are already showing. Vacancy rates are still high but the needle is moving, and the conversions are a big reason why. Michael Hoffman from CBRE Calgary says the program is making a “sizeable reduction” in empty office space while bringing people back to the streets after 5 p.m. It’s turning the downtown into a neighbourhood, not just a work zone.
This isn’t just a real estate play. It’s a rewrite of Calgary real estate trends. Every converted tower means a little less pressure on the suburban fringe, a little more foot traffic for the local cafe, and a fresh chance for the core to become a place people actually call home. The economic case is undeniable, but the emotional one is even stronger. A young professional like Villarroel now walks to work past the same glass and steel that used to send everyone home at six.
These towers were never meant to be apartments. Their floorplates are tricky, their elevators are in odd spots, and making them work requires patience and creativity. But the same constraints have produced some of the most character filled homes the city has ever seen, with massive windows and a sense of history you can’t build from scratch.
As the sun drops behind the Bow River, the glow from those converted windows feels like a new kind of skyline. Not one built by oil booms and corporate ambition, but one stitched together by people making dinner, watching a show, and living right where the city beats the loudest. For a town that has been defined by cycles of boom and bust, this quiet transformation might just be the most hopeful chapter yet.
