IF YOU'RE YOUNG AT HEART

The Bow draws attention to a city’s evolution
By Valerie Fortney
Calgary Herald May 10, 2013

Whenever he needs a dose of inspiration, Michael Brown needs only to glimpse outside his office window.

“I can see the top part of it,” he says of the 58-storey downtown skyscraper known as The Bow. “It’s a reminder for Calgarians to think big — we can do some very creative things in this city.”

For Brown, the presence of the towering structure a few blocks west provides a daily affirmation of his own endeavours of the past two years.

As president and CEO of the Calgary Municipal Land Corporation, it’s his job to oversee the transformation of the East Village from a former derelict area to a vibrant inner-city community.

While the East Village development promises to emerge as a diverse and dense neighbourhood offering everything from a national music centre and hotel to residential living and urban parks, it doesn’t boast a single skyscraper.

Still, Brown sees his project and that of the newly-opened Bow as being inextricably connected — and not because prior to joining the team at CMLC, he was employed by Matthews Southwest, the developer responsible for The Bow’s construction.

“The two projects have changed the way we see the east side of our downtown,” says the native Calgarian, whose grandfather, Fred Brown, was an East Village street cop back in the late 1940s. “They have helped to alter perceptions of our entire city.”

While Brown’s comments might sound hyperbolic to the casual listener, his views regarding the $1.4-billion building, Canada’s first trussed-tube skyscraper and the tallest structure west of Toronto, are gathering an increasing number of converts both here and internationally.

In 2011, the building designed by renowned U.K. firm Foster + Partners won an Alberta Steel Design Award of Excellence, given out by the Canadian Institute of Steel Constructors, which noted that its innovative external structure system helped to make it the country’s second-largest building in floor space.

In January, Azure Magazine — one of North America’s top architectural publications — counted The Bow, along with Calgary’s Peace Bridge, among its Top 10 Projects of 2012.

The two local structures were the only Canadian inclusions on a list that included the London Olympic Park and the iconic CCTV Tower in Beijing. Azure’s judging panel cited The Bow as an important symbol for an “oil-rich city that’s just beginning to pay attention to the look of its downtown core and the quality of its buildings.”

In April, The Bow added the biggest feather in its cap when it joined the likes of Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas Towers and New York City’s Hearst Tower by being named one of the world’s 16 most impressive corporate buildings.

According to a jury of experts gathered by Emporis, a German-based, global provider of building data, the crescent-shaped building located at Centre Street and Sixth Avenue S.E. meets all the criteria for inclusion on this prestigious list: design, visual impact and functionality of “significant corporate architecture.”

Earlier this week, I was taken on a tour by Encana’s MaryAnn Blackman to see if the interior of the gleaming, architectural wonder lived up to its outside billing. As any of the lucky 4,000 or so Calgarians owning a security pass for entry — most of them employees of energy companies Cenovus and Encana — will attest, it succeeds from the get-go.

The steel exoskeleton design allows for a city-within-a-city feel of spaciousness; the glass-filled, south-facing atriums on three higher floors create nothing less than spectacular meeting places; as well, panoramic city and mountain views are available from close to 80 per cent of the building’s offices.

It is, says Jeremy Sturgess, an iconic building that Calgary deserves at this moment in its relatively young life as an urban centre.

“The building of The Bow has helped in the recognition of Calgary as an international city,” says the prominent local architect, hired by Fosters and Matthews Southwest as The Bow’s urban design master planner. “It is one step in a process of steps for Calgary.”

Sturgess feels that having such an internationally recognized skyscraper in the heart of the city’s downtown east core will have lasting impacts in a wide variety of areas.

“I think it raises the bar for the City of Calgary and it sets a new tone for what is expected of developers,” he says, adding it will also inspire both established architects and graduates of design. “The Bow and the Peace Bridge are examples of Calgarians wanting to do something remarkable for Calgary.”

For Bruce Graham, The Bow’s rise on the Calgary skyline, a process 10 years in the making, mirrors that of the city’s ascent on the world scene over that same period.

Back in 2003, says Graham, president and CEO of Calgary Economic Development, Calgary was positioning itself as a centre for Western Canada, “an affordable, low-cost place to do business.”

What a difference a decade makes. Recent accolades, such as the city being named 17th overall on Z/Yen’s Global Financial Centre Index, show how those regional aspirations have evolved into global ones.

The bold statement that The Bow makes to our landscape and our skyline, says Graham, is “a reflection that our city makes to our country and the global marketplace.”

In time, The Bow’s impressive stature will be narrowly eclipsed by a new building at the site of the old Calgary Herald building on Sixth Avenue and First Street S.W. Upon completion within the next five or so years, Brookfield Properties’ 56-storey, 247-metre tower will become the tallest building in Western Canada.

For Calgarians like Michael Brown, though, it won’t replace The Bow as the symbol of what’s possible for the city of his birth.

“This building marks a realization that we don’t have limitations on what’s possible anymore,” he says.

“Twenty years from now, we’ll look back and say that the opening of The Bow was the moment when Calgary changed.”

COMMERCIAL LEASING REMAINS STRONG

Demand for Calgary downtown office space remains strong
Second Eighth Avenue Place tower nears being fully leased
By Mario Toneguzzi
Calgary Herald April 27, 2012

CALGARY — Continued demand for Calgary downtown office space has been so strong that the latest skyscraper project is getting closer to being fully leased.

Joe Binfet, managing director for Colliers International in Calgary, said the commercial real estate firm has received “tremendous traction” in leasing the West Tower of the Eighth Avenue Place development.

“There are only seven unencumbered floors left on which we can do lease deals on and remember this is a 40-floor, 841,000 square foot office tower. So that’s a significant sign of the strength of the Calgary economy downtown,” he said.

There’s about 150,000 square feet of vacant space in the second tower on the site which just recently began construction.

The owners of the project, which comprises a 49-storey tower on the site of the former Penny Lane block, recently said initial occupancy on the 40-storey second tower is planned for the spring of 2014.

The project is co-owned by Alberta Investment Management Corp., Ivanhoe Cambridge and Matco Investments Ltd.

The existing 49-storey tower, comprising 1.1 million square feet of office space, was completed in early 2011. Its construction began without any pre-leasing.

“There’s continued demand for AA and A space,” said Binfet.

“It’s not a frenzied pace like we were seeing earlier in the year but we are seeing cautious optimism in the marketplace and that bodes well for downtown office space right now.”

A downtown office report by Colliers said there has been 866,351 square feet of absorbed space in the first quarter of this year, marking the 10th consecutive quarter of positive absorption. The overall downtown vacancy dropped from 4.49 per cent in the previous quarter to 4.20 per cent “despite projections that the completion of The Bow, Encana and Cenovus’ new head office, would push the vacancy rate up across all building classes,” said Colliers.

It said AA and A class markets remain very tight with the AA vacancy rate at just 0.59 per cent. This is the lowest AA vacancy rate since 2006.

“Many companies with a long-term outlook for Calgary, and Alberta alike, are looking to new developments as their best leasing solution, given the limited availability within existing buildings,” added Colliers.

A downtown office market report by Avison Young said new office construction is not just possible but necessary.

“Vacancy models assuming even modest annual absorption in the area show downtown vacancy below three per cent for the next five years,” it said.

“It is likely that given the modest absorption rate we will reach sub one per cent vacancy in the downtown by mid-2013. What this means is that at least some major developments currently in pre-leasing will likely commit to construction within the year.”

Avison Young said this has already happened with Cadillac Fairview’s City Centre project while other major downtown developments could move ahead as well.

“Likely candidates include: Brookfield’s Herald Block, Oxford’s Eau Claire Tower, Aspen’s Palliser West and H&R REIT’s Bow South. All these developments are on a four-year or longer timeline so vacancies will remain very low.”

Photo by: Surrealplaces

BOW WOW

Calgary's The Bow: a new skyline symbol

NATHAN VANDERKLIPPE
CALGARY— From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2010
 
More than 200 metres above Calgary’s streets, a crane swings a long metal beam atop the West’s new architectural crown.


The five-tonne length of steel is designed to support the upper reaches of the Bow, a building that is a study in superlatives: the largest building in the Canadian West and the biggest steel project in Canadian history


Kerry Gillis watches the beam move, and shrugs.


“Piece of cake on this job,” says the chief operating officer of Ledcor Construction Ltd., which is building the Bow and has hoisted steel pieces three times as heavy.

Earlier this month, Ledcor finished assembling the building’s steel. The building’s diamond-shaped “diagrid” supports will be completed by year’s end; the walls of glass will be installed by late spring. The Bow, the largest North American construction project outside of New York’s Freedom Tower, will then be externally complete.

There is a certain hubris that comes with building a two-million-square-foot tower that, long before workers had so much as dug the first spadeful of earth for its parking garage, was expected to become the new calling card of Calgary. Even competitors say the Bow is an icon for the city, a glass-covered fist thrust in the face of the recession.

It did not escape the downturn unscathed – financing problems by owner H&R Reit resulted in the suspension of plans for a second building. But construction on the main tower never stopped, and the money issues were eventually resolved with a $425-million financing deal last April.

Now, the building’s upper reaches are taking shape at a time of resurgence for Calgary, which has profited from a new wave of development in the oil sands, driven by sustained strength in crude prices.

As some of the final beams are lifted into place, Mr. Gillis glances across the skyline – or, more properly, down on it, from the lofty heights of what will soon be the new headquarters of Encana Corp. and Cenovus Energy Corp. Several blocks away, crews have pushed another huge new tower, the million-square-foot Eighth Avenue Place, high into the sky. It, too, is a construction monument in a city that is nearing completion on two new landmarks.

But Mr. Gillis scoffs at that tower, too.

“Piece of cake over there. This,” he says, casting a glance around the complicated work of erecting the Bow’s curving structure 58 storeys into the sky, “is real construction.”

The Bow contains 45,000 tonnes of steel connected with 45 tonnes of welding and 800,000 structural bolts, some of them so big they barely fit in a man’s hand. It has 40 elevators and is so tall workers talk about the different climate at its summit. From the ground, its enormous walls of glass – which span an area the size of 14 CFL fields – swallow the sky.

For its builders, all of those attributes have combined to make the Bow Canada’s most prominent billboard – a building that remains on budget, although it may be completed slightly later than expected. It’s a feather in the cap that Ledcor’s most ardent competitors have acknowledged.

“I would call the Bow a signature building in Calgary,” said Roger Dootson, the vice-president and district manager for PCL Construction Management Inc., who also chairs the Alberta Construction Association. “And signature and iconic buildings do help out a company’s résumé for future projects.”

Ledcor has a long history in Alberta. Founded in 1947, it has grown into one of Canada’s largest construction companies, with $2-billion a year in revenue. But in Calgary, the Bow has been a coming-out party of sorts for Ledcor, whose efforts in Western Canada have focused largely on the less-glitzy work of building pipelines and oil sands projects. For Ledcor, the Bow has become something of a marketing exercise for its bread-and-butter business of putting together industrial structures.

Standing on top of the Bow, the reason is obvious. In its nearly-complete shadow stand the head offices of much of corporate Calgary. Suncor Energy Inc. is a next-door neighbour. TransCanada Corp. is so close that Ledcor once received a call from a safety executive at the pipeline company, who had spotted a lapse on site through his office window. The problem was quickly fixed.

Ledcor has toured all of its major corporate clients through the construction site, in hopes of creating a profitable halo effect from the building.

“It’s expertise. They can see that we’re not just a one-line company,” said Bob Scott, the Ledcor senior project director who has led the Bow project.

And there is little denying the scale of the Bow construction effort. Because it was building in the middle of a crowded urban environment, Ledcor had little spare space to work with – and has had to warehouse most of its construction materials at a large offsite yard. The company was obligated to turn delivery timing into an art form.

Another unique aspect: To save time and costs, each of the restrooms in the building was built in Ontario as a fully-finished, fully-furnished unit inside a container. Each container was then shipped, lifted into place and connected to plumbing, ready for use. Even the light bulbs were screwed in several thousand kilometres away.

Ledcor also had to contend with hiring up to 1,250 staff – the Bow’s peak labour requirement – in a province that was, when construction began, suffering from an overheated economy. But it got lucky: The downturn came just as construction ramped up. Suddenly, workers from Fort McMurray became available.

That doesn’t mean the Bow has been Ledcor’s most profitable endeavour.

“These big trophy assets are difficult, and at the end you say, ‘I could have made more money building 10 smaller towers,’ ” said Greg Kwong, regional managing director for CB Richard Ellis in Calgary. “But at the same time, you need these big trophy assets as far as stars on your chest are concerned, to help promote your company.”