A wave of oilpatch takeovers last year reverberated through downtown Calgary’s office market, but a program to encourage the conversion of empty towers is helping to firm up conditions during a topsy-turvy time.

And it’s generating more tax revenue from those properties.

A decade ago, the value of Calgary’s downtown office market began to tumble, triggered by global oil prices tanking, layoffs and a wave of industry consolidation.

Within four years, the total value of the downtown office buildings, which topped $21 billion in 2016, was cut in half. It  reduced city property taxes coming from these structures, even before the pandemic arrived.

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Since 2021, the total assessed value of the office towers south of the Bow River stabilized around $8 billion to $9 billion.

New city assessment data show downtown office properties saw almost a seven per cent decline in their combined value for the 2026 tax year, dipping to $7.7 billion from $8.3 billion last year.

It’s fallen 14 per cent in the past five years, although the number of office buildings in the core has dropped by nearly a similar amount.

That was driven, in part, by a city program that provides incentives to owners of vacant office properties to convert them into residential structures, hotels or post-secondary........

© Calgary Herald