How Tenant Needs and High Costs Are Changing Construction & Development

It's not just high costs that are forcing developers to get creative and incorporate a broader mix of uses in new projects. End users now expect nothing less, say panelists at our Construction & Development Update event on Wednesday, Nov. 18 at New World Stage, starting at 7:30am.

Macro Consultants founding principal Michael Fromm, who’ll be a panelist at our event, says one of the big things that’s changed in the four decades he’s been in the business is that end users expect more flexibility from space now. Michael worked on the Metrotech campus in Downtown Brooklyn in the '80s and '90s. Tenants in those days expected a ring of offices with cubicles in the middle, so that’s what you delivered in making plans, Michael says.

Now, he says, you only get the good tenants that make a project worthwhile if you deliver what they want these days: things like more flexible floor plans, collaborative space, room for amenities and things like internal staircases to make moving around easier. For a project to attract the right tenants, Michael says LEED Certification’s not really optional anymore. And if you want these amenities to be cost effective, he says, you’d better build them into plans at the earliest stages.

But just as tenants want flexibility, developers need to be flexible by incorporating a broad mix of uses into a project to make it work. Macro’s biggest current job is the 59-story, 1,121-foot tall Comcast Information & Technology Center tower in Philly, being built now. It’ll be the tallest building in the US outside of NYC or Chicago, and it’s going for LEED Platinum. Comcast will be the sole tenant for the building’s 1.5M RSF of office space. But here’s where it gets interesting: a 12-story Four Seasons hotel will top it off.

To make the dollars and cents add up, ground-up hotel projects are also getting creative with a broad range of uses. Case in point: MHP’s Dream Hotel, in the pipeline for the former site of the Parson’s School of Design at 40th Street and 7th Avenue. MHP principal David Sturner, who’ll be a panelist, tells us it’ll have a 16k SF retail condo and a two-story night club on the upper floors. We’ll see you at our event on Wednesday, Nov. 18 at New World Stage, 340 West 50th, Starting at 7:30am. Sign up here.