Mike Ablon, principal and founding partner of PegasusAblon, does not build or buy offices for millennials. Instead of limiting himself to one narrow demographic, he builds offices for Generation Connected, the multigenerational, overlapping demographic of people living and working in the fast-paced, interconnected world of today.
Bisnow: Jeremiah Jensen
Gensler principal Christopher Goggin at Bisnow's Big South Office event
“We took a little bit of a different stance on looking at millennials, which is we did not really look at millennials … We looked at Generation Connected, which is an overlapping demographic overview that takes all of connectivity and the generation we are in now, because the baby boomers are as heavily influenced with connectivity and mobility as the millennials,” Ablon said.
Ablon said the issue in managing the tug of war between generations in the office is not one of open office vs. closed office. The issue he pays attention to is that of overconnectivity. He said it is the thing that unifies Generation Connected.
“You get a lot of people who feel like they are all connected [and yet] they are together alone, and there would be a desire for greater social fabric,” Ablon said.
He addresses this by orienting his office acquisitions around what is outside the walls of the buildings.
“We decided the single most dominant trait of Generation Connected would be how it sat on the city fabric. That street, that urban fabric, that urban room, that ‘third room,’ would be the piece that everybody would have a desire [for],” Ablon said.
According to Ablon, the market is bifurcating into commodity type (in-house amenities) and walk type (out-of-house amenities) assets. His company’s strategy has been to invest in walk type assets.