Individual Project COR 628 — Diversifying Calgary Downtown Vacant Commercial Space | by Tatjana Stosic

8 min readJun 14, 2022

Individual Project COR 628 — Diversifying Calgary Downtown Vacant Commercial Space

by Tatjana Stosic

1. Identify the problem

Overview. I could very easily say that, how to approach and how to start this whole assignment, was my “the” first problem. And kind of wicked one too. I’m still not sure if I’m tackling it right, but I will give it a try.

The topic that I wanted to write about, was actually a problem of how to utilise a vacant commercial space in downtown Calgary. My group will be working on the same topic, trying to understand the problem, and to explore potential solutions. The topic is interesting, and has existed for some time now, and became even more conspicuous after pandemic ended.

Problem. Around one third of downtown Calgary commercial space is now empty (Downtown office vacancies in Calgary jumps to more than 30%: CBRE, M. Franklin, 2022). It has started with the oil and gas industry downturn, and became even more prominent after many people lost their jobs, and of those who didn’t, many decided to work remotely. It’s a kind of ghost-town-filling right now, in all that space, high above the ground in downtown Calgary. “The growing vacancy problem is the biggest risk to downtown vibrancy, Calgary’s economic competitiveness, and the City’s fiscal sustainability. To support downtown building owners exploring the conversion of vacant office space to other uses, The City created the Downtown Calgary Development Incentive Program through working in collaboration with industry experts including Calgary Economic Development’s (CED), Real Estate Sector Advisory Committee (RESAC), and the Real Estate Working Group (REWG) to develop the Incentive Program for office conversions. This initiative supports the city’s economic recovery by expediting the elimination of unused office space, and the development of vibrant residential neighbourhoods, while helping to support property values, and has overall goals to increase overall economic activity in the area, by generating construction jobs and increasing residential dwelling units to improve vibrancy” (Downtown Vacancy, City of Calgary, 2022). “Municipal fiscal sustainability is the ability of government to sustain its current spending and tax policy without threatening solvency or default” (The Municipal Budget Part 2: What is fiscal sustainability? Crystal Wilson, 2019), meaning that the city will have smaller budget for all the spendings, including affordable housing, Calgary 9–1–1 emergency service, social programs and services, fire and emergency response, public transport, police services, etc. (Our Organization Our services, City of Calgary, 2022). The grant from City Council was up to a maximum of $10 million per property unless City Council approves a greater amount for a particular application (Downtown Calgary Development Incentive Program, City of Calgary, 2021).

In the program phase one, city allocated funds to property owners who were interested in converting office space to residential space. In phase two, it is anticipated that it will include residential and additional adaptive uses (Downtown Calgary Development Incentive Program, City of Calgary, 2021).

“How might we” (HMW) — The power of reframing the “problem” into an “opportunity”.

Opportunity. “One slightly more unusual possibility could be vertical, urban farming. Travis Kanellos with Ontario-based Elevate Farms says former towers could be turned into automated, multi-storey greenhouses that would allow for fruits and vegetables to be grown year-round. … urban agriculture could be a great way to bring fresh produce to downtown residents and local residents. It’s a risky venture, you’re probably going to need some kind of an incentive to make it work … [but] there are so many people that work and live in the area, that’s probably your market (What does the future hold for Calgary’s empty office towers? CBC News, 2021). Elevate Farms is a vertical farm in southeast Calgary that was given $2.73-million grant from the Alberta government (Vertical farm under construction in southeast Calgary with $2.73-million grant from Alberta government, Stephanie Babych, 2021).

So, what is vertical farming in urban areas?

“Vertical farming is an indoor farming practice that produces food on vertically inclined surfaces, opposed to traditional outdoor horizontal farming. These crop layers are integrated into various unique spaces such as shipping containers, skyscrapers, warehouses, and greenhouses.” The most popular crops grown, are leafy greens, herbs, microgreens, and soft fruits. It’s done in a controlled and simulated environment; hence temperature, humidity, and light are controlled by the smart technology. Technology, such as artificial intelligence (AI), and internet of things (IoT,) brings optimisation to the whole process, and makes it happen, actually (Vertical Farming: The Future of Agriculture? Sasha Moonilal, 2022).

Despommier (2012) advocates that, these systems are a potential solution to many global problems surrounding food accessibility, poverty, health, environmental destruction and more (VERTICAL FARMING, City Farms Canada website).

There are, as always, advantages and disadvantages.

Pros would be: reliable production all year round (not weather/season dependant), reduced water consumption and land, and transportation requirements, and high crop yield with small footprint. Cons would be: high energy consumptions and costs, too dependant on technology, and lack of funding from government and investors (Vertical Farming: The Future of Agriculture? Sasha Moonilal, 2022).

Problem Statement:

“How the commercial building vacancy in Calgary downtown, could diversify into an urban agricultural vertical farming facility?”

2. Human centered design.

At this point, we start to focus on end user’s pain points. In order to solve problems, and create solutions, we need to define the subjects (our users), observe them in all the right places, and start asking questions related to what you see while observing, to understand what your users care about and why. Forget your assumptions and ideas that you might have regarding their needs, tasks, steps, and milestones of a person’s process, and ask specific questions to understand their goals and actions. By being specific, you will be able to get to the core of the problem and get into a position of being able to empathise, and then obtain possible solutions (Kris Hans, 2022).

After thinking about all possible subjects, I’ve decided that there are several of them: the most affluent are property assets (office/commercial buildings) owners, then downtown Calgary residents and families, City of Calgary governance, services and officials, and food producers and food markets/grocery stores. For the sake of being the least affluent, but being most affected, and being the nucleus of our community as a whole, I’ve put residents and families as the subjects of the human-centric approach. In order to deliver the answers of these people to my questions, I’ve researched many articles and forums where people talked about pros and cons living in downtown Calgary. These are the questions that I was considering, and information gathered:

- What are the pros and cons of living in downtown Calgary?

Cons: A lot of people live there, in small apartments. Transit system isn’t the greatest compared to other cities in Alberta and Canada. Not enough box stores to do the shopping. Not good access to amenities. Hard to get the services. Safety issues (crime, drug addicts and homeless people)

Pros: Everything is within reach so you can easily walk places. Lot of green park areas. Access to a water front. Lots of schools to choose from.

- What do you think about converting office building vacancy to residential?

Only about half of around 6 mill sq.ft. can be repurposed for the residential dwellings. More people will occupy a same amount of space.

- What would be your suggestion on these vacancies’ conversion?

There are no sources about residents’ suggestions. Articles are talking about: converting commercial to residential, SAIT converting a building for its new School for Advanced Digital Technology, and to multiple tech companies, co-working spaces, a 7,000-sq.-ft. fitness centre, and outdoor dog park; and there is still a lot of unused space.

- What is your intake on converting it to an urban agricultural vertical farm?

Again, there is no online conversation about the issue, as far as I know. But there is a positive, as well as, negative, sentiment from journalists: one group think that changes are going in a positive direction, against the others that think it will change nothing.

I would say that truth is somewhere in the middle: we need to populate the downtown area as much as we can, first because of the safety issues, and the city budget; but it’s wrong if we don’t think about remodeling an infrastructure to match a higher number of residents, and also, making changes in all kind of services that are needed for the city to be livable, when changing residents’ population structure.

An Empathy Map is used as a tool to better understand the persona, a middle-class family living in a downtown Calgary:

After the research I’ve done and while I was creating an Empathy Map, I was getting more and more able to empathize with my persona, which is a middle-class family, with small kids, educated, renting a small apartment in downtown Calgary, or as it could be put, I was able to “put myself in their shoes.” What was helpful as well, was the kind of a similar experience that I and my family had, when we’ve started a new life in this country. We wanted and still want what is best for our daughter, and for our family as a whole.