Suncor Energy Centre

The Suncor Energy Centre, formerly the Petro-Canada Centre, is a 181,000-square-metre (1,950,000 sq ft) project composed of two granite and reflective glass-clad office towers of 32 floors and 52 floors, in the office core of downtown Calgary, Alberta. The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat lists the west tower (215 m or 705 ft as measured to top of the structure), as the 23rd tallest building in Canada and the 6th tallest skyscraper outside of Toronto, as of 2023. The west tower overtook the Calgary Tower as the tallest free-standing structure in Calgary from its completion in 1984, until being surpassed by the neighbouring Bow in 2010. The office towers encompass 158,000 m2 (1,700,000 sq ft) of rentable office space with the complex also containing 23,000 m2 (250,000 sq ft) of retail and underground parking area. A glass-enclosed walkway (part of the +15 System) provides shelter and easy access to the surrounding buildings.

The building was often called Red Square in its early years, a derisive reference to its primary occupant Petro-Canada, which was a federal Crown Corporation created under Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's National Energy Program. Following the completion of the complex in 1984, one writer for the Calgary Herald described the buildings as "a twin-towered, $200-million monument to socialism", and later Premier Peter Lougheed would blame Petro-Canada and the two towers for the collapse of the Calgary real-estate boom, in part by flooding the market. Petro-Canada was privatized in 1991 under the Brian Mulroney government and acquired in 2009 by the complex's current namesake, Suncor Energy, which continues to operate the company as a subsidiary.

History

Planning for the complex began in the late-1970s following the creation of Petro-Canada. Petro-Canada came to an agreement with the West German firm ARCI Inc.