There’s a bright new outlook emerging on the streets of the provincial capital, says a local commercial real estate agent.

“I think Edmonton is becoming a more dynamic place to live and work,” says Scott Hughes of Royal LePage Commercial Inc.

“We’re having a lot of numbers that we haven’t seen since the early 1980s,” says Hughes.

“It’s the first time in my memory that Edmonton has been highlighted on the national scene.”

It’s been a while coming. The local economy was hit heavily by the National Energy Policy of the early 1980s and later the Klein government’s cutbacks of the early 1990s.

With government offices occupying 40 per cent of the market in Edmonton, the provincial cuts had an impact on the local office market. The capital’s other primary office market is sensitive to energy prices and related issues such as the NEP, Hughes notes.

The economic takeoff has been building steadily since the mid-1990s but was especially strong in 2001, when there were many highlights. The downtown office vacancy rate fell three percentage points to end the year at 9.7 per cent. On the residential side, Edmonton had triple the national rate of housing starts, at 7,855 units.

The investment real estate sales volume was $782.4 million, Hughes told real estate executives at a recent forum in Edmonton.

About $68 billion in oil and gas projects are driving the industrial sector of the economy.

Retail and apartment vacancies are down – spurring a rash of new new developments, and the downtown office market looks better in both the financial and government core areas.

Downtown office absorption was 428,600 sq. ft. last year, and Royal LePage is forecasting another 195,000 sq. ft. absorption this year.

The vacancy rate should slide further to nine per cent.

Suburban office vacancies are forecast to end 2002 at 8.8 per cent, with about 100,000 sq. ft. absorbed over the year.

Edmonton is also making strides in becoming a distribution hub like Calgary, Hughes said.

Nearly half of the manufacturing industry in Alberta is within 30 kilometres of the capital.

Edmonton, noted Hughes, has been shielded from the economic slowdown being experienced in Ontario and the United States.

“Imagine if oil and gas prices were high right now, we would be on such a wave,” he added. “We’re doing very well as a province as it is . . .”