EnCana tower

UPDATE 2-EnCana plans huge office tower in booming Calgary
Thu Oct 12, 2006 4:20pm ET
CORRECTED - EnCana says new Calgary office to cost C$850 million
By Jeffrey Jones

CALGARY, Alberta, Oct 12 (Reuters) - EnCana Corp. plans to build a C$1 billion ($877 million) Calgary office complex, a huge, crescent-shaped tower officials hope will revitalize one of the booming Canadian oil city's few eyesore areas.
The 59-storey glass and steel building, which will dominate Calgary's skyline when completed in 2011, will be by far the biggest project in a downtown market where seven office towers are already under construction, city officials said Thursday.
EnCana, Canada's largest energy company, will consolidate its head office staff in the 1.7 million square foot complex straddling two city blocks on the east side of the downtown core. They are currently scattered in five buildings.
The structure will be the country's tallest office tower outside of Toronto. It could cost C$850 million to C$1 billion, said John Brannan, the EnCana executive leading the project.
"The project team is working on a lot of the details right now, working with contractors to help finalize it. But that's our estimate at this point," he told a news conference.
Led by a boom in spending on oil sands and other energy projects, Western Canada's construction industry has been hit with surging costs due mostly to a tight labor market.
Meanwhile, Calgary's commercial and residential real estate markets are the hottest in Canada due to the energy boom. EnCana is concerned about such inflation, but the building's design, featuring steel construction rather than concrete, should help keep costs down, Brannan said.
In the second quarter alone, EnCana posted a profit of $2.2 billion. Last week, EnCana said it would spend $7.5 billion in a deal with ConocoPhillips to develop its Alberta oil sands reserves and process the heavy crude at U.S. refineries.
The company aims to eventually sell the curved building, called "The Bow" after the river that flows through the city of one million people, to a real estate management firm.
It was designed by London-based architects Foster + Partners. The firm also designed Beijing Airport, an expansion of the Hearst Tower in New York and revisions to London's city hall and Wembley Stadium.
The southwest side of the tower will be concave, providing a panoramic view of the Rocky Mountains in the distance and the torch-shaped Calgary tower in the foreground. Levels with indoor gardens are planned 18 floors apart.
A seven-story retail building will be attached to the squat York Hotel, which will be renovated. It was built in 1930 and was most recently used for low-income housing.
Calgary Mayor Dave Bronconnier and other city officials said they hope the new complex will kick-start revitalization of the threadbare east end of downtown, where several renewal proposals failed to materialize in the past decade.
Many of the buildings were razed long ago and now the area is domain of Calgary's growing homeless population.
"This project is a catalyst for the redevelopment," Bronconnier said. "It's something that's been a focal point from city council -- to deal with the preservation of heritage, the protection of it as well as new building, and then of course dealing with people who are in the area." Current office construction projects in Calgary are expected to add 12.3 million square feet of space, increasing the city's capacity by 25 percent, officials said.
Pictures of the planned complex are available at http://www.encana.com/pdfs/media/building/images.pdf.
(Additional reporting by Scott Haggett)($1=$1.14 Canadian)
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