The ground level provided retail space for Burns' retail meat market. The long market hall featured twelve high Doric marble columns. Burns leased out the remaining of office space to a wide variety of tenants. Historian Hugh Dempsey wrote, "the list of businesses which occupied the Patrick Burns Building…reads like a corporate Who's Who." Calgary Power, Alberta Investment and Insurance Brokers, Rocky Mountain Cement and a variety of dentists, doctors, lawyers, realtors, insurance agents and accountants were among the first tenants.
