Edmonton is facing a serious oversupply of office space and will see vacancies rise to a projected 18.6 per cent by late 2018, warns Cushman & Wakefield.
The caution comes as the Alberta capital prepares for the completion of the 66-storey Stantec office tower in 2018. The 29-storey, 130,000-square-foot Edmonton Tower opened in 2016.
At the end of 2016, Class A office space in the city core stood at 13 per cent.
While leases absorbed 384,000 square feet in the last three months of 2016, due to the occupancy of the Edmonton Tower, this will be “offset by negative absorption over the next few quarters as a backwash of space from these tenants re-enters the market”, real estate agency Cushman & Wakefield stated.
Edmonton’s chief economist John Rose expects the value of city building permits issued this year will total about $3.8 billion.
