What has been built, altered and repaired since 2012.
The City of Calgary permit record for every office parcel in this dataset: 13,289 non-residential building permits, 3,298 development permits, $7.21B of declared project cost. Applicant and contractor names are never reproduced.
This is a retrofit market, not a construction market
Work class comes from the City’s own classification on each building permit. 89% of all office building permits since 2012 are alterations to existing buildings.
Applications by year
Development permits lead building permits: a use or a sign is approved, then the work is permitted.
What development permits are actually for
Category as the City records it. Change of use and signage dominate, which is the signature of tenant turnover rather than development.
The largest declared projects
Ranked by declared project cost at application. Status is shown on every row: a large declared cost is not evidence that the work was completed.
| Building | Permit | Applied | Work class | Declared cost | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brookfield Place | BP2013-10778 | 2013-07-25 | New | $376.0M | Completed |
| 215 2 St SW | BP2012-04982 | 2012-04-27 | New | $237.6M | Completed |
| 707 5 St SW | BP2014-09085 | 2014-06-16 | New | $181.3M | Completed |
| 600 3 Ave SW | BP2013-05271 | 2013-04-24 | New | $173.2M | Completed |
| 5302 Forand St SW | BP2015-05219 | 2015-05-07 | New | $95.4M | Completed |
| 5255 Mccall Way NE | BP2026-08728 | 2026-05-19 | Alteration | $64.4M | Issued Permit |
| 5255 Mccall Way NE | BP2026-11890 | 2026-06-26 | Alteration | $58.9M | Hold - Prescreen Review |
| 611 Meredith Rd NE | BP2013-04012 | 2013-04-02 | New | $53.6M | Completed |
| 517 10 Ave SW | BP2012-01284 | 2012-02-07 | New | $51.5M | Completed |
| Suncor Energy Centre | BP2024-07627 | 2024-04-24 | Addition | $45.4M | Issued Permit |
| 5255 Mccall Way NE | BP2017-13445 | 2017-10-06 | New | $41.5M | Completed |
| 622 1 St SW | BP2022-02473 | 2022-02-17 | Addition | $32.4M | Issued Permit |
| 5255 Mccall Way NE | BP2013-18470 | 2013-12-13 | Alteration | $31.4M | Completed |
| 5255 Mccall Way NE | BP2016-09983 | 2016-08-25 | Alteration | $29.4M | Completed |
| 3855 Front St SE | BP2014-10440 | 2014-07-08 | New | $28.5M | Completed |
| Brookfield Place | BP2018-04041 | 2018-04-13 | Alteration | $27.6M | Completed |
| 105 12 Ave SE | BP2013-18991 | 2013-12-30 | Addition | $27.1M | Completed |
| The Bow | BP2022-17831 | 2022-10-21 | Alteration | $25.0M | Completed |
| 240 4 Ave SW | BP2025-02087 | 2025-02-05 | Alteration | $25.0M | Completed |
| 133 6 Ave SE | BP2012-10073 | 2012-07-23 | Alteration | $25.0M | Completed |
| 364 9 Ave SW | BP2024-25892 | 2024-12-16 | Alteration | $24.4M | Completed |
| 5720 4 St SE | BP2012-10429 | 2012-07-30 | New | $24.2M | Completed |
| 10921 14 St NE | BP2016-03071 | 2016-04-05 | New | $24.1M | Completed |
| 5255 Mccall Way NE | BP2013-14758 | 2013-10-01 | Addition | $23.6M | Completed |
| 505 Quarry Park Blvd SE | BP2013-11880 | 2013-08-14 | New | $23.0M | Completed |
| 505 Quarry Park Blvd SE | BP2012-15657 | 2012-11-09 | New | $22.4M | Completed |
| 630 3 Ave SW | BP2013-08986 | 2013-06-20 | Alteration | $22.4M | Completed |
| 5255 Mccall Way NE | BP2012-02411 | 2012-03-07 | New | $22.4M | Completed |
| 50 Quarry Park Blvd SE | BP2013-02387 | 2013-02-28 | New | $22.2M | Completed |
| 50 Quarry Park Blvd SE | BP2012-16565 | 2012-11-30 | New | $22.2M | Completed |
What inspectors actually checked
The City publishes 54,879 inspection results against permits on 694 of these sites, including 6,910 on a life-safety checklist and 1,502 on the barrier-free checklist. A Not Acceptable result is an ordinary step in the sequence, not a finding about the building.
Permit status across the record
Every status value the City publishes on these permits, not a simplified subset.
| Status | Building permits |
|---|---|
| Completed | 11,510 |
| Issued Permit | 649 |
| Cancelled | 369 |
| Expired | 312 |
| File Closed | 238 |
| Pending Plans Review Assignment | 122 |
| Refused | 60 |
| Pending Plans Review | 6 |
| Pending Prescreen Review | 6 |
| Hold - Prescreen Review | 6 |
| Hold - Pending Plans Review | 5 |
| Hold - Completeness Review | 4 |
| Application Received | 1 |
| Suspended-Expired | 1 |
Questions
What the permit record can and cannot tell you.
What counts as a permit here?
Development and non-residential building permit applications that The City of Calgary locates inside one of these office parcels, applied for since 2012. 13,289 building permits across 725 sites and 3,298 development permits across 627 sites.
Is the declared cost what was actually spent?
No. $7.21B is the sum of estimated project cost declared at application. It is not audited, not adjusted for inflation, and not a record of money spent. Several work classes are routinely declared at zero, so the total understates activity rather than overstating it.
Does a permit mean the work happened?
No. Status is shown on every row precisely because applications are cancelled, refused, expired and withdrawn. A permit is a record of an application, not of a completed building.
Why are there so many change-of-use and sign permits?
Because they are the ordinary business of an occupied office building: a new tenant with a different use class, or a new sign. They are a useful signal of turnover, and they are counted separately from construction work classes here for that reason.
Public record sources: Current Year Property Assessments (Parcel), Historical Property Assessments (Parcel), Assessment Subproperty Use Codes, 3D Buildings - Citywide (LiDAR roof outlines), Land Use Districts, Transit LRT Stations, Green Line Stations, Plus 15, Historic Resource (Inventory of Evaluated Historic Resources), Development Permits, Building Permits, Calgary Existing Buildings - Performance Metrics (BenchmarkYYC), Calgary Business Licenses, On-Street Parking Zones with Rates, Building Inspections Results, Residential Parking Zones, Snow and Ice Clearing Priority Routes, Traffic Signals, Calgary Bikeways — The City of Calgary, retrieved 2026-09-24. Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – City of Calgary. Building names, floor counts and architects, where shown, come from Wikidata (CC0). No brokerage, listing-data or commercial research source is used.
Boundary: Assessed values are the City’s assessment-roll figures for taxation and are not sale prices, asking rents, vacancy or availability; Alberta does not publish transaction prices. LiDAR heights are roof-surface elevations above the lowest ground point at the building perimeter and can differ from architectural heights. Storey equivalents are derived at 3.9 m per storey and are not floor counts. Distances are straight-line. Permit descriptions are the City’s records at retrieval and do not establish current use, tenancy or availability. Read the methodology.