New tenants and decision-makers looking to land prime commercial real estate are thinking differently about the way people work. As work and life blend more closely together, the corporate experience is shifting from rigid and isolated to livable, approachable, and authentic. And in Southeastern cities, a renewed interest in urban life means developers can easily get in and make a real impact revitalizing and building these fast-growing, high demand communities.
To help navigate this new corporate era, we’ve created a road map of five ways we can design and build for success:
- Focus on community
Office buildings used to require all the amenities an employee could need to be on site. Now, however, location is the amenity tenants seek. Invest in building office space in areas with good restaurants, coffee shops, gyms, residential areas and other extras that are walkable. It gives tenant’s employees flexibility, and nearly guarantees your space will be leased.
- Implement texture
Many cityscapes in the Southeast are blank slates begging for more texture. A simple box may be a great value, but it can also be dropped anywhere. Adding texture with interesting facades and garden walkways on the first 30ft can radically change the way people experience a building and its surrounding urban fabric. For a new building to fit into the community, and for it to help define a city, making it compelling to people on the street will make it worth it.
- Move the core
Traditional office spaces typically keep a lobby and elevator shafts in the center of a building; however, repositioning the core elsewhere opens up organic opportunities for collaboration and socialization, building the kind of culture that businesses aspire to have.
- Create “Instagrammable” moments
A simple way to keep eyes on your building is to save room for “Instagram” moments that visitors can’t wait to snap a photo with, whether that’s an interesting sculpture by a local artist or a street art mural. Showing off an office building’s location, look and feel, and the culture of a company on Instagram is rapidly becoming a selling point for companies recruiting new hires.
- Activate outdoor space
Utilizing the space around the building, whether it be meeting areas, garden paths from the parking garage, or a flexible rooftop event space, increases employee wellness and adds texture to the building. At a relatively small additional cost, this move can prove to be a big payoff.
What do you think about the new corporate office? Let us know in the comments or tag us on social media with your thoughts.
