Calgary Warehouse Site Selection

Step 1 — Write the operating requirement, not the real estate requirement

Before square footage: what moves in and out, in what vehicles, how many times a day, at what hours. How much racking, at what height, at what weight per bay. Power draw. Temperature. Staff count and shift pattern. Where your people live and where your customers are. The real estate falls out of that.

Step 2 — Fix the geography

Calgary's industrial land is concentrated: 3,450 accounts in the southeast, 2,555 in the northeast, and only 200 in the two western quadrants combined. Choose the half of the city on drive time to customers, access to the ring road and the labour catchment — then choose areas within it.

How the two quadrants differ → · All 95 industrial areas →

Step 3 — Screen on land use before you screen on buildings

If your operation needs outdoor storage, heavier processing, or a customer-facing element, the district decides feasibility. I-G carries 4,018 accounts and the broadest use list; I-H only 47; I-O 32. Direct Control sites (933 accounts) need their specific bylaw read. Screening here first prevents expensive dead ends.

Step 4 — Use age and parcel size as physical proxies

Neither clear height nor dock count is published in Calgary's open data, so construction era and parcel area are the best available proxies for shortlisting:

• Built before 1960 — 281 accounts, median parcel 39K sq ft
• Built in the 1960s — 547 accounts, median parcel 51K sq ft
• Built in the 1970s — 1,404 accounts, median parcel 88K sq ft
• Built in the 1980s — 615 accounts, median parcel 94K sq ft
• Built in the 1990s — 683 accounts, median parcel 62K sq ft
• Built in the 2000s — 1,448 accounts, median parcel 84K sq ft
• Built in the 2010s — 858 accounts, median parcel 116K sq ft
• Built in the 2020s — 189 accounts, median parcel 100K sq ft

They are proxies, not specifications. Verify everything physical in the building.

Step 5 — Check freight context

6,015 Calgary industrial accounts sit within 500 m of a published City truck route, and 4,726 within a kilometre of a dangerous-goods route. That is corridor context, not access. Whether your vehicles can actually enter, turn and dock on a specific site is a physical question answered on site. How freight context is measured →

Step 6 — Read the permit history

Permit and development records matched to an address tell you whether a building has been actively worked on and roughly what for. 1,809 Calgary industrial addresses have connected building permit records and 2,847 have development applications. Recent, substantial activity is a signal worth following up. Silence is not evidence of neglect — it may just mean nothing needed a permit.

Step 7 — Cost the whole occupancy, not the rate

Net rent plus additional rent plus utilities plus your own capital plus the cost of the drive time you are buying. A cheaper rate in the wrong half of the city can be the most expensive option on a five-year view. What sits inside additional rent →

Step 8 — Build the target list, then go direct

The last step is the one the public record is genuinely good for: producing a defensible list of every building in your chosen geography that meets your physical screen, whether or not it is being marketed. That list is how you find space that never reaches a listing.

Browse all 6,205 Calgary industrial property records →