How Hot Is the IE Office Market?
Once upon a time (let's call this time "2010"), CIP Real Estate signed 15 leases totaling 70k SF and valued at $9M at one of its properties in Ontario. Well, in 2014, the company just bested that.
CIP Real Estate has completed more than $27M worth of leases at the Empire Towers complex in Ontario this year. The company owns four of the six buildings in the office complex with an affiliate of Guggenheim Real Estate. CBRE leasing agent Phil Woodford says the Inland Empire office market has made a great recovery and vacancies should decrease to pre-recession levels, meaning rental increases this year and next.
One of the deals was CBRE itself, which renewed and extended 10 years. The brokerage converted its space, which it's occupied since 1998, into a collaborative open office format as part of the firm's Workplace360 initiative. Like CBRE's new Downtown LA HQ, the Ontario office is 100% free-address and paperless, with no assigned workstations. Designed by Gensler with CBRE's Workplace Strategy team, the office offers a variety of work settings including sit/stand desks. (Great for wellness or just trying to appear taller than people next to you.)
CBRE Inland Empire region managing director Joe Cesta says this is the first office in the IE across any industry to go to a free-address environment. The open office plan allowed the firm to cut its space to 15k SF from more than 21k SF. At the same time, the new floorplan increased employee capacity by 30%. A 1,512 SF reduction in file storage was reallocated toward additional collaborative and private workspaces.
