NCR Puts A Full Tower Of Its Headquarters On The Market
Just four years after developing a gleaming new headquarters campus in Midtown Atlanta, financial technology giant NCR is looking to hand off half of it to another company.
NCR has listed the full building at 864 Spring St. for sublease, according to marketing materials posted on the commercial real estate listing service LoopNet.
JLL Senior Managing Director Brooke Dewey is marketing the 14-story, 277K SF tower for sublease, according to the listing. Dewey didn't return calls seeking comment.
NCR, the company that invented the cash register but now is mostly focused on software, is the latest in a string of large companies seeking to offload surplus office space into a market already bloated with it.
There is 8M SF of office space available for sublease in Metro Atlanta, an all-time high and up more than 30% from last year, according to Avison Young. More than 2M SF of that is sitting vacant, with the rest occupied while being marketed.
NCR debuted its 765K SF, two-tower campus in the heart of Midtown in 2018 after moving from the Atlanta suburb of Duluth. Cousins Properties developed the build-to-suit campus for NCR, with the fintech company signing a long-term lease for the property to house 5,000 of its employees.
NCR representatives didn't respond to requests for comment. The fintech giant has not announced any major layoffs, often a precursor for companies offering their leased space for sublease.
The Fortune 500 company announced last year that it intends to split into two separate publicly traded entities by the end of 2023, one focused on its software business and the other focused on its ATM division, after exploring the possibility of selling the entire company.
“Throughout the strategic review process, we received material interest in a whole company sale of NCR, as well as interest in various individual segments of our business,” NCR Executive Chairman Frank Martire said in a statement at the time. “In recent days, it has become increasingly clear to the Board that, given the state of current financing markets, we cannot deliver a whole company transaction that reflects an appropriate and acceptable value for NCR to our shareholders.”
NCR's 864 Spring St. is among the largest contiguous spaces to hit the market, behind Cox Automotive’s 391K SF sublease offering at 3003 Perimeter Summit, according to Avison Young. The Home Depot has the largest amount of sublease space available in the region with more than 600K SF across seven suburban buildings.
While the universe of sublease space is at a record for the region, Midtown's office market is seen as relatively healthy, with 18% of all sublease availability in Metro Atlanta, said Sara Barnes, the director of insight for Avison Young’s Southern region.
But NCR isn't alone in the neighborhood among companies seeing if they can find a subletter. Most recently, McKinsey listed 58K SF of its leased space at the newly delivered Midtown Union building, according to CoStar. Anthem is marketing 164K SF at its 310K SF 712 West Peachtree St. tower in Midtown as well, according to Avison Young.
Other major subleases in Metro Atlanta include IBM’s 239K SF offering at 6301-6303 Barfield Road, Serta Simmons' 143K SF headquarters at Assembly in Doraville, Global Payments’ 110K SF office at 10 Glenlake Parkway in Central Perimeter and Novelis’ 125K SF office at Two Alliance Center in Buckhead.
Despite the deluge of unused office space hitting the market, Barnes said she expects NCR to see a lot of interest in the tower given its newness and Midtown location.
“They are going to have some pretty decent competition from some new built-out space, but I think they will see a lot of action,” Barnes said. “It’s new space and it gives companies a chance to be in Midtown when they couldn’t afford something like this.”
