Armco's 2.4 Million Feet: Mapping G2S2's Bet on Downtown Calgary Office

Disclosure: We hold no financial position in Armco Capital, G2S2 Capital, or any of the buildings named below, and we have no business relationship with the buyers or sellers. Nothing here is investment advice. Every figure in this piece is attributed to a public source, and where a number is not public we say so.

When we first started mapping this, one buyer controlled about 2.4 million square feet of downtown Calgary office space. As of April 2026 that figure is closer to 4 million. While pension funds and institutional owners have spent the past few years trimming their office exposure, a privately held, Halifax-based family firm has been buying in the other direction, tower by tower, right through the worst stretch of Calgary's downtown vacancy story.

The buyer is Armco Capital, acquiring through its Armco Alberta arm. Armco is wholly owned by G2S2 Capital Inc., the Halifax investment firm controlled by George Armoyan. Their thesis is not complicated. Armco has told reporters it believes in the return to office and does not see work from home as permanent, and that the exit of pension funds from the sector is the opportunity, not the warning sign (RENX, "Armco Capital makes big bet on Calgary office sector").

Here is the portfolio they have assembled, in the order they bought it.

Altius Centre (2023)

The first piece was Altius Centre, a 32-storey tower at 504 4 Avenue SW of roughly 330,000 square feet. Armco acquired it in 2023 from Canadian Property Holdings (Alberta) Inc. The purchase price was not disclosed at the time, though Storeys later reported it at about $20 million (Storeys, "Armco Buys First Canadian Centre In Calgary For $46.5M"). For a full downtown tower, that number tells you most of what you need to know about where Calgary office values sat at the bottom.

Bow Valley Square (October 2024)

The scale changed in October 2024 with Bow Valley Square, a four-tower complex of about 1.4 million square feet with towers of 17, 32, 37 and 39 storeys and roughly 100,000 square feet of retail. Armco and G2S2 bought it from Oxford Properties. Storeys reported the price at about $140 million. At the time of sale the complex was around 90 percent leased, with one notable soft spot: KPMG, which occupies close to 10 percent of the space, is set to depart in 2026 (RENX, "Armco Capital makes big bet on Calgary office sector"). A 1.4-million-square-foot trophy asset changing hands for roughly $140 million is the single clearest data point in this whole story.

First Canadian Centre (November 2024)

A month later came First Canadian Centre, the 41-storey Class A tower at 350 7 Avenue SW with about 540,000 square feet of office and retail, announced November 20, 2024. The seller was GWL Realty Advisors, with Avison Young acting as broker, and Storeys reported the price at $46.5 million. The historical figure is what makes this one sting: GWL paid $188 million for the same building in 2005, buying it from Bank of Montreal (RENX, "Calgary's First Canadian Centre office tower sold to Armco Capital"). Armco also flagged development upside. The building sits on a foundation designed in 1981 to carry a 64-storey structure, and Armco has talked about eventually adding a residential tower on that existing base.

First Tower (September 2025)

In September 2025 Armco added First Tower at 411 1st St SE, a 28-storey building of 729,760 square feet, of which 688,106 is office. The sellers were Hines and Oaktree Capital Management, who had held it since 2018. The price was not disclosed. First Tower was redeveloped in 2020 and carries Class A status with LEED and WiredScore certifications, so this was not a distressed shell (RENX, "G2S2, Armco acquire Calgary's First Tower office highrise"). Worth keeping First Tower and First Canadian Centre straight, since the names invite confusion. They are two separate buildings, on opposite sides of the core.

Stephen Avenue Place (April 2026)

The most recent move, announced April 24, 2026, was Stephen Avenue Place, a 40-storey Class A tower of about 613,000 square feet in the Financial Core, bought alongside the adjacent historic Kraft and Venator buildings, which add roughly 33,566 square feet of early 20th-century retail. Price and seller were not disclosed. Steven Darrow, Armco's President of Atlantic Canada and Alberta, framed it as strengthening the firm's position along Stephen Avenue and reflecting continued confidence in Calgary's downtown (Armco Capital news release, April 24, 2026). With this deal, Armco's own materials put the downtown portfolio at roughly 4 million square feet across First Tower, Altius Centre, First Canadian Centre, Bow Valley Square and now Stephen Avenue Place.

What the pattern says

Everything past this point is our read, not a sourced fact, so we're labeling it as such.

Two things stand out. The first is that Armco is a private buyer moving into a sector that institutional owners spent three years exiting. When a pension fund sells a trophy tower for a fraction of its mid-2000s value, that shows up on a balance sheet as a loss. When a private firm buys the same tower, the low basis is the entire strategy, because it can hold, wait, and let low acquisition costs carry thin rent rolls in a way a fund answering to quarterly marks cannot.

The second is the development opportunity. The 64-storey foundation under First Canadian Centre and the Stephen Avenue retail assembly read as land and conversion plays wearing an office building's clothes, closer to real estate options than to rent-collection assets. If downtown Calgary's recovery leans on residential conversion, and much of the public policy points that way, Armco has quietly positioned itself to hold the sites where that conversion is cheapest to build.

The open question we can't answer from public filings is how much of this is debt-financed. Most of these prices were undisclosed, and a privately held firm does not publish its debt covenants. A portfolio bought near the bottom is a strong position if it is equity-heavy and a fragile one if it is not. If any of these deals produce a public financing detail or a land title record with a mortgage figure, that is the number we want, and it is the one we'll chase next.

For now, the record is plain. One family office from Halifax has become one of the largest office landlords in downtown Calgary, and it did it by buying while nearly everyone else was selling.

What This Means If You're Leasing Right Now

A single private owner controlling this much downtown space changes how negotiations work across several buildings at once — lease terms, capital plans, and even landlord flexibility can start to look similar across an Armco-owned portfolio rather than varying building by building. If you're evaluating space in any of the towers named above, it's worth understanding who else in the market now shares a landlord with you.

What we do: Calgary Office Advisors represents office tenants in Calgary — not landlords. We can help you evaluate how ownership concentration in a submarket affects your negotiating position, and represent your interests in any lease negotiation.

Contact us for a no-obligation consultation on your downtown Calgary office search.

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Sources

• RENX, "Armco Capital makes big bet on Calgary office sector."
• Storeys, "Armco Buys First Canadian Centre In Calgary For $46.5M."
• RENX, "Calgary's First Canadian Centre office tower sold to Armco Capital," November 20, 2024.
• RENX, "G2S2, Armco acquire Calgary's First Tower office highrise."
• Armco Capital news release, April 24, 2026.

Data in this report reflects market observations as of Q2 2026. Figures are as reported by the cited sources; verify current numbers before making any business decisions.