Contract furnishings provider, Hightower received multiple awards at NeoCon 2021, including IIDA's 'Best Small Showroom' (under 4,000 sf) and 'Best of Competition' for its newly designed Chicago showroom.
Humanscale welcomes Elizabeth Margles to its Marketing Division in the role of Chief Marketing Officer. Margles comes to Humanscale with twenty years of experience in design, fashion and retail and a background in public relations and advertising.
The exclusive relationship with Kontrol's BioCloud® Technology will provide real-time detection of airborne pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2 to help make workplaces safer as organizations return to the office.
The ‘gig’ workers – often referred to as consultants, contractors, freelancers or temp workers – are ultimately changing the corporate landscape and how we work. Companies can now much more easily hire non-permanent employees on an as-needed basis, while gig workers are enjoying the freedom, flexibility and work life balance they crave. Everyone wins.
Automation is here to stay. The rise of the machine has proved a constant since the Industrial Revolution. However, acceleration in the pace of change at present is primarily down to digitisation, the 21st-century's phenomenon.
Say hello to The Wheeler: Today, Tishman Speyer revealed the plans for its forthcoming renovation of the Macy’s department store on Fulton Street in Downtown Brooklyn, and as expected, it’ll transform the space above the shop into a 620,000-square-foot “creative office hub,” which seem to be all the rage for developers these days.
Nowadays, when it comes to companies looking for a new location to call home for their headquarters or satellite offices, the local talent pool should be the top consideration for most businesses, along with available real estate and the presence of clusters—physical hubs housing a large concentration of same-sector businesses and support services.
While talent continues to reign supreme on the list of top concerns for US companies a growing number of respondents to CBRE’s annual Americas Occupier Survey cited economic uncertainty as a top challenge, up from 36 percent in 2016 to 52 percent. As a result, 87 percent of corporate occupiers report that they are managing to this uncertainty by disposing of surplus space and/or implementing more efficient workplace designs to prepare their portfolios for the future. Only 26 percent of respondents expect to expand their portfolios over the next two years, down from 38 percent in the 2016 survey. Approximately one-half of the 2017 survey’s respondents indicated that the size of their portfolios would remain stable with 2016 levels. However, while uncertainty is driving many real estate decisions, creating a workplace experience focused on talent remains top of mind for the majority of occupiers surveyed.
The number of new leases taken up by the largest law firms in London fell by more than 50 percent last year, claims a new report from CBRE. The study of the 100 largest firms in the capital found that the firms are rethinking their real estate strategy in the light of new developments in flexible working, technology and the result of the Brexit referendum. According to the report, the total space taken through new leases in 2016 was just under 500,000 sq ft – 55 percent down on 2015 and 36 percent below the 10-year average. The report found that no law firms had signed deals for more than 90,000 sq ft last year. The largest deal of 2016 was CMS’ leasing of 84,199 sq ft at Cannon Place ahead of its merger with Nabarro and Olswang, with lawyers from the three firms set to consolidate into one building.
Changing American work habits and the growing popularity of co-working spaces like WeWork, Workhouse and the Farm continue to transform the office landscape. And residential developers have taken notice: A number of new residential projects feature shared work spaces that channel the vibe of trendy start-ups with computer bars, comfortable seating and coffee stations.
Few industries ride the boom and bust of the American economy as closely as the commercial real estate sector, which can be both a bellwether of success or one of the first to be bludgeoned by a downfall. By nature, it’s a cyclical business. But according to research by REIS, analyzed by City Observatory, while many areas continue to build high-rises and new office space, the square footage per employee has shrunk dramatically during the recent economic upswing. And that smaller footprint has big implications for development and planning.
JLL’s point of view on top 10 global real estate trends to influence decision-making in 2017. Must-know for all corporate clients into 2017.
The tech sector is taking off in Asia Pacific. Both start-ups and tech giants are building their presence in the region – whether Facebook and Google in Singapore or Slack and Zen Desk in Melbourne.
Meanwhile, Silicon Valley-like projects have popped up across Asia in cities such as Shenzhen, Bengaluru and Ho Chi Minh.
In today’s evolving real estate markets it’s no longer just the modern office towers clustered in city centers or the strategically located business parks that are considered to be core property assets.
Office real estate will experience a slowdown this year, with some experts projecting the market has reached its plateau. A labor shortage coupled with millions of square feet in new supply expected to come online this year will take its toll on the sector. Though office-using employment remains healthy thanks to strong demand from tech companies, the pullback in office-using jobs and more than 50M SF of projected office supply scheduled to hit this year (the most since 2009), is expected to push up vacancy rates. CBRE expects rent growth to slow, with rents increasing by 1.5% over the course of this year, down quite a bit from 4.5% growth in 2015.
International design and consultancy firm Arcadis has named New York City as the world's most expensive city in which to build, according to its annual International Construction Costs Index. Building in New York is 50% more expensive than in the average U.S. metro and 20% more expensive than in other pricey cities like Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles.
San Francisco follows behind New York in cost to build and brings its own set of issues — seismic requirements, lack of contractors and limited real estate — that raise costs. On the other end of the spectrum, building in Houston will cost developers 10% less than the national average.
Office space in Denver has become more open and creative in recent years, but only a fraction of it. A lot of space has been left behind and will increasingly need to update as tenants demand it.
Modern businesses these days demand flexible workspaces with varying sizes, locations, amenities, and leasing terms.
Liquidspace, a leading provider of flexible office spaces, conducted an analysis of its marketplace in the final quarter of 2016 to pinpoint current and future demands. Their conclusion: more providers recognize the need for flexible terms and flex space needs will continue increasing.
Any commercial space rented less than on a five or 10-year lease is considered a flexible workspace. LiquidSpace offers rentals on hourly, daily, monthly, and extended year terms, but for the purposes of their report, they focused on leases ranging from one month to three years. Their discovery? Companies want shorter rental and lease terms.
In a world of ever-reducing space, a skyscraper is an efficient way to create homes and offices without too large a footprint. It is interesting, then, that so many skyscrapers are full of hot air. In the race for the biggest buildings, architects have fallen back on antennae and pointed spires – with the result that skyscrapers are not so much efficient uses of space, but overblown vanity projects.
Annual rental growth on prime office assets across the 110 major markets covered by the JLL Global Office Index decelerated to 2.3% in Q4 2016, down from 3.0% in Q3 and the slowest rate of full-year growth in three years. Quarter-on-quarter, rents rose by 0.4%, mirroring the pace from the previous quarter.
Further deceleration is expected during 2017 as more markets move into balance. While global leasing volumes are forecast to be broadly stable on 2016 levels, new deliveries will peak this year and the global office vacancy rate will trend slowly upwards over the next 12 months. Many more markets will be trying to absorb a greater volume of new deliveries and, with occupiers keeping a close eye on costs, prime rental growth is set to soften further to around 2% for the full year.
Whether it’s a single block of stores in an idyllic small town or the business district of a bustling urban square, every vision of Main Street America has something in common: a panoply of small businesses, symbols of American opportunity and success.
But in today’s economy, that vision often looks as realistic as a Rockwell painting. According to Dynamism in Retreat, a new report by the Economic Innovation Group, a bipartisan public policy think tank, small businesses aren’t just suffering—they’re in the midst of a striking, and historic, decline.
“We’re adding businesses at the most anemic rate in history,” says John Lettieri, cofounder and senior director for policy and strategy at EIG. “We’re five full years into the recovery, and you still see an inability to get anywhere near historic norms for business formation. It’s a structural shift.”
Inspired by Millennials, the collaborative office design is now popular across most industries and age groups. Office building landlords are now outfitting lobbies with amenities and creating indoor and outdoor spaces where building occupants can work, socialize and meet with each other or clients.
Office landlords are capitalizing on a concept originally conceived by co-working operators like WeWork, according to JLL National Research Director Julia Georgules. “The bottom line for employers occupying creative office space is they want to attract talent,” she says. But for landlords, enhancing common areas is becoming important to sustaining occupancy levels.
A 2016 Workplace Innovation Survey, administered by architecture and planning firm Gensler, revealed that the most innovative workers are twice as likely to have a choice about where and when they work and are twice as likely to use amenities such as cafeterias, coffee shops, outdoor spaces, gyms, restaurants and childcare facilities, according to Gensler architect Maria Martinico. She notes that landlords are improving office building lobbies with soft seating, wine and coffee bars and trying to create environments that provide an experience.
Tenants are not only charged for the square footage that they occupy (called the “usable square footage”). They are also responsible for things that might not belong to any tenant – things like corridors, elevators, stairwells, etc. The loss factor is calculated by dividing the difference of the usable square footage and rentable square footage by the rentable square footage. So if a tenant needs 10,631 usable square feet and the loss factor is 27% (typical for full floors now in Manhattan, and much higher for multi-tenant floors), the tenant needs to be prepared to budget for 14,563 rentable square feet.
