Power Reads: 5 Interesting Articles That Will Help You This Week

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in leadership and the CRE world. They pull from one of four "corners": corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. Each day we can become a better version of ourselves.

1. Google, others adding office space in anticipation of the great return

Since January 2020, Google’s parent company Alphabet has spent nearly $100M on expanding its U.S. commercial real estate portfolio, including a $28.5 million office it bought in Sunnyvale, CA. at the height of the pandemic.

“More recently, Alphabet announced in January it would spend $1 billion for a campus-like office setting in London.”

“We'll be introducing new types of collaboration spaces for in-person teamwork, as well as creating more overall space to improve wellbeing,” Ronan Harris, managing director of Google UK wrote in a blog post. “We’ll introduce team pods, which are flexible new space types that can be reconfigured in multiple ways, supporting focused work, collaboration or both, based on team needs. The new refurbishment will also feature outdoor covered working spaces to enable work in the fresh air.”

2. Officials: Leasing activity signals downtown ATL office comeback

In the first Q&A to ever appear on these pages, Duda Paine Architects principal Jeff Paine effused optimism that Atlanta’s next true skyscraper was likely to move forward soon, despite a lingering pandemic and general reluctance to head back to offices en masse.

“Nearly a year and a 1/2 later, the 45-story shard at 50 Allen Plaza—dubbed “Fifty” for short—still hasn’t begun its ascension over the downtown Connector. But at an associated property next door, recent leasing activity is evidence that downtown’s office market is healthy and that WFO (work from office) culture could be making a broader comeback, according to leasing officials.”

After negotiating two new leases at 55 Allen Plaza, a 14-story building located a block east of Centennial Olympic Park, officials with Lincoln Property Company Southeast noted that downtown was Atlanta’s only submarket to finish Q1 this year with a positive office absorption. Having added more than 28,000 square feet of leased space, downtown’s vacancy rate stood at 19.1 percent, lower than both Midtown and Buckhead, per Lincoln reps.

3. Confidence in tech demand sparks plans for a new office tower

The calling card of West Midtown’s Brickworks development is its converted warehouses and loft-style buildings. 

“Turning the property into commercial space was an early bet that rapid growth would eventually spill into the district. It did — with 500,000 square feet in office space developed since 2020. Now, two years after adding Brickworks to its portfolio, owner Asana Partners plans to develop the first ground-up building at the property.”

The Charlotte-based real estate company will develop a 14-story office building on a 1.2-acre vacant lot, expanding Brickworks’ leasable office space by another 225,000 square feet. Sterling Bay, a real estate investment and development firm out of Chicago, will partner with Asana. The partnership has not yet secured construction financing.

4. Tech Industry Warns That More Remote-Work Jobs Are Headed Out of U.S.

Tech-industry representatives are coming to Capitol Hill this week to warn that the remote-work trend will lead to more offshoring of software developer and other technology jobs unless the U.S. admits more high-skilled immigrants.

“Remote jobs in tech jumped by more than 420% between January 2020 and last month, growth that was intensified by the pandemic, according to a jobs data review by Tecna, a trade group for regional tech councils. In February, more than 22% of all tech jobs were listed as remote, compared with 4.4% in January 2020.”

“The level of remote tech positions that are open is drastically higher than it was prepandemic,” said Jennifer Grundy Young, Tecna’s chief executive officer. “That means workers can live anywhere in the U.S., but it also unfortunately opens the door to more outsourcing—workers staying in India, in China, or moving to places like Canada that have more flexible immigration policies.”

5. WeWork Narrows Loss as Sales of Desk Space Reach Highest Level Since Beginning of Pandemic

Global flexible office space provider WeWork narrowed its first-quarter loss as it cut costs and its consolidated desk sales reached the highest level since the pandemic’s start.

“The loss was reduced to $504 million, or 47 cents a share, from $2.03 billion, or $14.34 a share, a year earlier, New York-based WeWork said Thursday in a statement. Revenue rose 28% to $765 million, beating the company’s previous forecast of revenue rising to as much as $760 million, while total expenses fell by almost half to $1.12 billion. WeWork still expects its adjusted bottom line to break even by year’s end.”

Consolidated gross desk sales, which excludes franchise and joint venture markets in Israel, India and China, totaled 166,000 dedicated workspaces, or 10 million square feet, up from 120,000, or 7.2 million square feet, a year earlier. That was the highest level since the first quarter of 2020. The company relies on providing space for flexible lengths of time to both large numbers of workers for major companies and small groups or individuals.

Your success blesses others. I wish you a great and hugely impactful week!