One of Canada’s fastest growing cities, Calgary, is experiencing a population boom. Between 2019 and 2023, the number of people living here increased 13.4 per cent, from 1,330,058 people to just under 1.68 million as of July 1, 2023. In 2023 alone, nearly 96,000 people were added to the city’s rolls. Fuelled predominantly by international immigration and interprovincial migration, Calgary’s population boom is unprecedented.
And all of these people need homes. Whether to own or rent, the need for more housing in Calgary is acute.
So unfolds the story of Cairo Development, a multi-family residential developer and construction management company in Calgary. Launched in 2020 by founder Ash Mahmoud in response to what he foresaw as an opportunity, Cairo has grown over the past six years from a one-man construction consultancy into a full-service multi-family developer and owner with projects across the country.
“We’re doing really well,” Mahmoud confirms from Cairo’s offices in Calgary. “We’re working through the expansion of our business from a pure construction management company to be more of a developer and investor. This gives us the ability to perform better on our projects since we’re in the driver’s seat, rather than passenger’s seat.”
To date, Cairo has completed approximately 900 multi-family units in Canada, with another 1,400 under contracts to be built, comprising 15 different projects. Mahmoud himself has completed roughly 3,000 units since coming to Canada in 2014.
Born in the Middle East to Egyptian parents, Mahmoud was exposed to the construction industry from a young age. “My dad was an architect and developer,” he explains “though he worked on smaller sized projects. I used to work with him. I’ve been in this industry since 1997, 27 years now. I haven’t done anything else.”
He completed a Bachelor of Construction Engineering at the American University in Cairo, as well as some other postgraduate programs, including a Diploma in Construction Management from the University of Edinburgh.
“Most of my experience and career was in the Middle East,” he notes, “specifically Dubai and Qatar starting around 2000. I was there during the boom era when lots of construction started to happen.”
In Dubai, Mahmoud worked from construction management to development management positions, then moved into investment and asset management. “I did the full cycle of real estate,” he says. “I’ve worn all the hats from beginning to end. And my construction background has given me an advantage in the real estate industry. I learned development by education and experience. Then I learned investment by education and experience. Real estate is my goal.”
Mahmoud worked in all types of real estate assets in Dubai, including institutional, shopping malls, offices, infrastructure and industrial. “But the focus – 80 per cent – was multi-family,” he says. “Before I came to Canada I finished around 6,000 units.”
In 2014, Mahmoud moved to Ontario, but didn’t stay long. “I was there four months,” he chuckles. “At that time it was very competitive, and since I had no Canadian experience, no one would talk to me. Calgary was a bit different. I started from the bottom, a very junior position compared to what I did before. And then I made my way from the bottom to the top.”
He eventually landed a job at Strategic Group, a local real estate developer, in the development team. In time, he was running the group’s construction division.
In 2020, Mahmoud left and started his own one-man consultancy. And then COVID hit.
“Most developers were stuck with some issues,” he explains, “but I believed there was a good opportunity to start a company in construction management and development at that time, since everything had shut down. I expected an eventual boom because even though they closed immigration, stopped construction, stopped permits, people still needed homes. That will never stop. And I knew that one day, they would open up immigration again.”
“I expected that this would be a record boom, and I wanted to ride the wave up,” he continues.
“I intentionally called it a development company, rather than just construction management, because we wanted to do everything. But our focus – and we’ve been very successful in doing it – has been construction management.”
Cairo was born in November of 2020 in the depths of the pandemic. “We began as a construction manager who builds for others for a fee,” Mahmoud explains. “Most of our clientele in the initial stage were less sophisticated developers. Someone who has an opportunity on a piece of land. We would help them through the first stage – the design of the units, layouts, locations, everything. And then we take them to the development stage. We choose the engineers for the project and work with them until the complete building permit drawings are ready.”
In those early days, Cairo didn’t charge its clients during the development stage as it was trying to be competitive and gain work. “And then we took the projects into construction and up to completion,” he says.
The company found itself a nice spot in the market that was being ignored: “No one wanted to do multi-family. There were very sophisticated, large companies and small ones who couldn’t do it. So we came in and took this middle position, which made our name in a very short period of time.”
Today, Cairo builds all types of multi-family developments: high-rise concrete, wood frame, town homes, and six storey or four storey wood-frame buildings. It is also a large player in the office to residential conversion market in Calgary. “We had this experience – which is a unique niche – to convert offices to residential,” he says. “Currently we’re around almost 1,000 units in the process of conversion, between pre-construction, construction and completion.”
In Calgary, the company has completed three multi-family projects and/or office conversions, and has five more in the works. It has two projects in Airdrie, five developments in Edmonton, three developments in Canmore, one in Ottawa and one in Penticton.
Cairo only builds multi-family. “We’re very focused to get better experience and knowledge within the team,” Mahmoud explains. “We advise on suite layout, amenities, square footage. We’re focused on profitability. We talk to the client in the language he wants.”
Often, it partners with clients on projects and plans to do more partnerships in the future. To this end, the company plans a reorganization this year so as to have three separate divisions – construction, properties and asset management – all housed in one, focused on delivering profitability rather than just a product. “So we can partner with others and approach a project from the start,” he explains. “Our team has so much experience to leverage in this model.”
Mahmoud expects the Cairo Group to be launched very shortly this year: “In the future, we’ll take minimum construction management service projects and do more majority ownership properties because from a financial perspective, it’s much better.”
To leverage its office to residential conversion expertise on a global scale, Cairo has created a new company called Turn, a project management consultancy service to convert offices to residential. “It is more focused on the U.S.,” Mahmoud says. “It will provide consultancy services for clients who have vacant offices. We give them a business plan and opportunity to convert these vacant offices to residential.”
Through Turn, Mahmoud and his team can reach countless investors and developers and provide them with very detailed business plans: “On a global scale, there is a lot of vacant offices. And most of the offices are in great locations for multi-family. We thought that with our knowledge and experience, we can provide project management services where we don’t have to be on the ground. We can work virtually. And whenever we have job we’ll have someone with boots on the ground to work with the construction manager there. We are going to be the client representative working with the investor or developer to help them convert offices.”
The company plans to focus on Texas first, and expects to fully launch the service in April.
Another project Cairo’s team is working on is an AI company called CAIstruct. It is an independent company that will develop an AI machine to support project managers and coordinators.
“This idea came from a problem we faced: a difficulty in finding talented and experienced project managers,” Mahmoud explains. “That made us think – could we take most of the activities done by the project manager and have AI do it? For example, have AI do the full bidding process, monitored by a person. The process could take a project manager seven to 10 days, easy. With AI, it can be less than half an hour. We’re taking similar activity from the project manager and feeding it to the machine.”
Building CAIstruct will cost Cairo an initial investment of around $2 million, but the focus remains on the bigger picture of helping to save on labour costs. As an independent business, Mahmoud plans to take CAIstruct into the U.S. and sell some shares to larger investors.
With roughly 77 employees, 25 of which are in the office, Cairo’s culture has evolved from a very small, family-like group, into a much more structured and corporate organization. “We’re working hard on trying to improve the company nature and environment,” he says. “But with growth and expansion it can be difficult. You need stability. But it’s also a great opportunity for people to grow and expand their capabilities and experience.”
Mahmoud is a board member of Trinity Place Foundation and as a company, Cairo supports several local causes, including charities that support teenagers in need, the Drop-in shelter and the Mustard Seed.
“Calgary is an amazing city for growing our business,” lauds Mahmoud. “It has all the variables needed to encourage entrepreneurs and our industry. But we do need to continue to develop industries other than oil and gas, because there are lots of investors that will come here. We need to encourage them.”
With a growing city as its base, Cairo Development is ready to build many needed homes. Lead by Mahmoud with his years of international and domestic experience, the company will continue to leave its mark on Calgary’s footprint.
