Calgary office workers bringing bustle back to downtown, at least during work week

The hustle and bustle of downtown Calgary life appears to be trickling back as more employers are requiring workers to file into the office at least a few days a week.

Yet as the city marks three years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, some habits that formed in the past 36 months have proven hard to shake, such as working from home and eating at restaurants.

Cristina Schultz, recruitment manager at About Staffing in downtown Calgary, said employers in the city are increasingly pivoting back to an in-person model after experimenting with hybrid work over the past year. 

In some cases, the companies are replacing workers who weren't willing to give up the benefits of working from home. 

"There is a little bit of a disconnect where employers are kind of trending more towards that in-office [model] … where workers are still seeking that flexibility or seeking that work-from-home opportunity," she said. 

'Rediscover downtown Calgary'

Todd Throndson, the Calgary area managing director for real estate service company Avison Young, said last year saw the top brass of several large organizations push to bring workers back to downtown Calgary, at least in a hybrid capacity. 

"A lot of them did it in different ways, but you saw a very significant change and improvement in the vitality of our downtown marketplace," he said. 

Avison Young calculated the overall downtown vacancy rate fell to 27.2 per cent in the last quarter of 2022, a drop of 2.5 percentage points from the same time a year before. 

While Throndson said the growth in the downtown marketplace has flattened in the last couple of months due in part to concerns over the broader economy. There is still demand for the highest quality office spaces.

"We expect to see a very positive 2023, likely starting out cautious and moving more into a positive approach as we move into the spring and summer," Throndson said.

Workers returning to offices has translated to more people at downtown restaurants and cafes. 

Mark Garner, the executive director of the Calgary Downtown Association, said Calgarians tended to stay in their neighbourhoods during the first two years of the pandemic, but that's starting to change as people venture downtown for a night out, particularly toward the end of the week. 

"You're starting to notice that the restaurants are full and you have to make reservations again," he said, noting several new establishments have opened in recent months.   

The downtown association said foot traffic in the downtown core remains about half what it was before the start of the pandemic, but it's slowly ticking up. As the weather gets warmer and workers increasingly return to offices, Garner expects the downtown core to get busier. 

"People are going to rediscover downtown Calgary," he said.

Working for the weekend 

From inside the health food cafe Wise and Wright on Stephen Avenue, manager Boris Mostaghim has noticed how companies' hybrid work models have affected business.

"It seems like from Tuesday to Thursday, it's kind of busier, because that's the expectation for [workers] to come back to the downtown core," he said. 

Mondays and Fridays are consistently slower, Mostaghim added, noting that weekends and evenings have remained "quite dead." 

Before the pandemic, the cafe was open on weekends. Now, Mostaghim said, ownership is looking at opening on at least one weekend day if downtown traffic continues to improve in the coming months.

"Over the last year, we've definitely become busier, but it's still not the same as pre-pandemic," Mostaghim said.

At the city's parkades, more cars are rolling through, but Chris Blaschuk, manager of the Calgary Parking Authority, said revenues haven't rebounded to pre-pandemic levels. 

Hybrid work has also been a factor here. Instead of buying a monthly parking pass, many downtown workers are opting for 10-day flex passes to accommodate the few days a week they're in the office each month. 

"It's essentially 25 per cent less than a monthly pass," Blaschuk said. 

During the week, parkades are filling up during the day and hitting pre-pandemic maximums. However, Blaschuk said that's not the case with the city's surface lots, which have more capacity.

Tom Goldthorp, general manager with Tower Cleaners, said that while business has increased over the past year, it remains roughly 35 per cent below pre-pandemic levels. 

"We're finding that people are getting away from office attire, because a lot of people are part-time at the office and part-time at home," he said. 

The drop in office attire resulted in a drop in dry cleaning services. To help make up for that, the business pivoted to offer laundry service, which it provides on a subscription model.

Tower Cleaners has been in Calgary since 1978 and has several downtown locations. Goldthorp noted that many regulars continued to support the business even when they weren't going into the office in recent years.

"Kudos to the people of Calgary," Goldthorp said. "They're a resilient group and they do want local businesses to thrive."