ONE Properties continues to invest in Calgary with highrise development
by David Parker/Calgary Herald
January 6, 2022
This city continues to attract investment, particularly in the development sector as evidenced by the number of highrise apartment towers in the core and Beltline districts.
The confidence of companies such as ONE Properties bodes well for downtown businesses that need an influx of customers, as well as employers who see the benefit of staff being able to walk or cycle to the office.
From his corporate office in Edmonton, president and CEO Darren Durstling is bullish about Calgary’s multi-family residential market. In 2017 — in partnership with AIMCo — the company opened Versus, its first highrise residential towers here offering 444 units along 10th Avenue S.W. And he is confident of the success of ONE Properties’ BLVD Beltline complex under construction on Macleod Trail at 12th Avenue S.E.
It is in an ideal location that is walkable to downtown, 17th Avenue and the Victoria LRT station.
The two towers that make up Phase 1 rise 34 and 37 storeys across from the Stampede grounds, providing a total of 651 units above 16,500 square feet of retail spaces along 12th and 13th avenues. It is a great location for a unique restaurant to serve residents and the surrounding community.
Above the vast entrance lobby along Macleod Trail is a two-storey fitness centre, one of the many classy amenities that include a pool, outdoor cinema, golf simulator, 35 th floor Sky Terrace, demonstration kitchen, cyclists’ bike storage, wash and maintenance benches.
Residents were welcomed into the north tower in November, the second opens this spring and a third tower is planned that will add another 280 units to the complex.
BLVD Beltline is the second large residential development here by ONE Properties, but the company has been investing in this city’s real estate market for many years.
Durstling points to the company’s successful initial focus on industrial parks, which include Great Plains at more than one million square feet, and Stoney Industrial Park at more than 2.3 million square feet. Its prime current development is StoneGate Industrial Park at Country Hills Boulevard and Deerfoot Trail N.E., serving the distribution and logistics industry as well as light manufacturing and commercial service users.
To date, StoneGate has provided 1.6 million square feet of leasable units and will bring another 850,000 square feet of industrial bays to market this year.
Adjacent to the industrial parks is StoneGate Landing, destined to be the largest AAA suburban business park of its kind in Western Canada.
ONE Properties was also quick to see the potential for redevelopment of the former Sunnyside Greenhouse lands at the intersection of 16 th Avenue and Sarcee Trail N.W.
It’s a large site encompassing a total of 15.2 acres on both sides of 69th Street, with the Phase 1 development’s Bow River Shopping Centre scheduled to open in June.
Located in the vibrant and family- and community-oriented neighbourhood of Bowness, its excellent visibility and frontage has attracted an 86,000-square-foot Real Canadian Superstore as anchor tenant and a separate liquor store divided by a Dollarama. Across the parking lot, a residential complex is planned to offer 400 units.
Phase 2 will add another 40,000 square feet in 2023.
Durstling has a lot on the go in Calgary and is planning to invest more with his partners AIMCo to redevelop the Metro Ford site on 9th Avenue S.W.
ONE Properties has prospered well under Durstling’s leadership over the past 10 years with many major projects in its portfolio. They include co-ownership of the ICE District in Edmonton, a number of mixed-use residential/commercial developments in Toronto and more than three million square feet of industrial in the Greater Toronto Area.
Since it was incorporated in 1987, ONE Properties has developed or has under development 48 million square feet of real estate. And we are pleased that it continues to invest in Calgary.