urbanMSP

Posted: **July 14th, 2020, 10:15 am**

The trend was already pointing towards more work from home but the biggest issue for me is the lack of a work life balance. If I stay late in the office that’s my choice but when it’s at home especially during the worst days of the stay at home orders I found myself working on a Saturday or Sunday night at times just for something to do. If you don’t have a dedicated home office (mine is my kitchen table) it really hurts the work life balance.

I've felt the same way. I also feel like sometimes I'm not productive at regular working hours so I start working other non-traditional hours. Then I get exasperated and go into the office. Sometimes I jut want to get out of the house and wish the libraries were open.

Posted: **July 14th, 2020, 5:43 pm**

I've never really had that issue. At 4:30 I leave the "office", the third bedroom in my house, and don't enter it again until 8:00 AM. I won't even use the room for non-work stuff because I've had enough of doing real work stuff in there during the business day. My personal laptop is on the sun porch and my personal gaming PC is in the basement.

Initially my company made it be a requirement that the home office had to have a door that could be closed off from anyone else in the house, but that of course went out the window in the recent exodus from the company offices.

The main thing I miss is being able to walk down the hall and buy food at the cafeteria, although I like very much having my own coffeepot and restroom. And although I had an easy commute from one suburb to one suburb over, I don't miss driving in snowstorms even though I have all wheel drive.

Posted: **July 15th, 2020, 10:40 am**

Initially my company made it be a requirement that the home office had to have a door that could be closed off from anyone else in the house, but that of course went out the window in the recent exodus from the company offices.

How would they know, though?

Posted: **July 15th, 2020, 10:47 am**

I've been WFH for four months now; I've gotten used to it but part of me does want to get back to the office eventually. I live close by, so the commute was never an issue. My colleagues who have long commutes love WFH and want to keep doing it as long as they can.

I'd probably like it a lot more if I had a separate work area. I live in a 1BR with my significant other, so my office is a corner of the living room. As others have noted, it makes the work/life separation tricky.

Posted: **July 16th, 2020, 9:47 am**

I've seen both ends of the spectrum already playing out. Some companies are already saying they'll shrink their space when leases renew, but I've also seen some companies expanding and taking more space already. It'll be interesting to see this play out.
I can't work from home so it was never an option for me, but even if I had the option I know myself enough to know that I'd struggle with distractions from my kids and dog and everything else that goes along with it.

Posted: **July 22nd, 2020, 11:52 am**

I think it's inevitable that some companies realize they can save a ton of money by shrinking their downtown space and having people work from home. But I think there will be plenty of people who want to head back to the office.

I know I'm one of them. I actually started a new job during the pandemic with a big, institutional downtown employer. Almost nobody will be back in the office until at least 2021, but it seems like some teams are making the move to remote work a permanent thing. I'm itching to actually get into the office because trying to collaborate on work is much harder when everything is remote. Quickly popping by somebody's office or cubicle to ask a question about something is often easier than back and forth over Slack/email. There's also fewer distractions (so many video meetings have been interrupted by dogs barking or children screaming or whatever else) and -- IMPORTANTLY -- reliable internet access. My building has Xfinity, but it's been incredibly unreliable over the last few months. And I know I'm not the only person having issues. Plenty of folks have laggy connections or have to hop on their personal phones to join meetings.

If the WFH order continues well into 2021, I'm strongly considering changing apartments. Like a lot of folks, I'm working out of a 1-bedroom apartment with a less-than-ideal office setup. I really would like a den/alcove/something that I could dedicate to work rather than devoting a large chunk of living room to extra monitors and work spread out everywhere.

We've probably seen the end of spec office space for a while. Probably some office-to-residential conversions like St. Paul. Maybe even depressed rents that allow some companies to make a move into downtown?

Posted: **July 23rd, 2020, 9:29 pm**

One of the negatives about working from home I experience on a daily basis is the appalling writing skills of fellow employees in emails or other communications. Honest to god, I'm astonished at how truly awful Americans are at expressing themselves through writing. In this age of social media in which a brief, short-handed, one-dimensional statement is the norm, conducting real business suffers. In the F500 company I work for, you'd better be damned precise when discussing business, because vague descriptions waste time and money and cause utter confusion when people can't accurately express what it is they either want or expect from you. It's far more efficient to take 10 seconds to walk over to someone's desk to clarify a request rather than wait 20 minutes for an e-mail response because that person is tending to their 9-year-old at home.

Posted: **July 24th, 2020, 7:35 am**

I'm thankful that my company fully supports employees having their kids at home during this pandemic, and has given us tools like Skype and cell phones so we can quickly contact other coworkers when informal communication is needed.

Posted: **September 10th, 2020, 12:47 pm**

45,000 sqf leased in Campbell Mithun (Two22) by Principal Financial

https://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/ ... s.amp.html

Posted: **September 14th, 2020, 12:59 pm**

Deluxe Corp. is selling their 50-acre campus in Shoreview and moving 538 employees to 801 Marquette, the former TCF Tower. (Locked)

Posted: **September 14th, 2020, 1:18 pm**

Awesome news! Great to see some confidence by some of our businesses!

Posted: **September 14th, 2020, 1:29 pm**

Sounds like Deluxe is consolidating their spaces. They have 80 across the country. Seems like when people consolidate space, and have workers doing a hybrid strategy high quality spaces in Downtown areas may be appealing.

Posted: **September 14th, 2020, 1:37 pm**

Maybe worth noting that they recently signed a bigger lease in suburban Atlanta.

Posted: **September 14th, 2020, 1:47 pm**

I think its noteworthy that they didn’t also bring those jobs to downtown but either way this and the Principal Financial were needed to help downtown and finally bring some good news.

Posted: **September 14th, 2020, 1:54 pm**

Yep, that's for sure true!

It just made me think that selling their legacy campus and moving to a few floors of a non-prestige building maybe means they've got other long term plans.

Posted: **September 14th, 2020, 2:54 pm**

"Moving to downtown Minneapolis is an exciting next step, helping accelerate our transformation while deepening our community commitment. Our new headquarters will offer our employee-owners access to everything downtown offers including walkable amenities, robust public transportation, warm hospitality venues, engaging entertainment and a spirit of innovation and optimism,” McCarthy said in a news release.

Deluxe did not say how many square feet the company will take in the building, but the press release references hundreds of employees.

Deluxe said it will sell its current headquarters at 3680 Victoria St. N. in Shoreview. That 50-acre campus off of Intestate 694 is valued at $18 million for property tax purposes.

Construction on the new offices will wrap up in fall of 2021. Deluxe employees will continue to work remotely until then, according to the release.

Posted: **September 14th, 2020, 3:06 pm**

The TCF building has actually turned out really well based on the few times I have walked through it so its not like they are moving into the north star building.
I hope its a move that means a long term commitment to downtown Minneapolis.

Posted: **September 14th, 2020, 3:45 pm**

Here's a Strib article about the move. Apparently they're consolidating down to three major locations: HQ in Minneapolis, manufacturing and call centers in Kansas City, and product and app development in Atlanta. Seems like Sandy Springs/Georgia probably gave them a pile of tax breaks to land that facility, for what it's worth.

Posted: **September 14th, 2020, 4:47 pm**

"Moving to downtown Minneapolis is an exciting next step, helping accelerate our transformation while deepening our community commitment," said Deluxe Chief Executive Barry McCarthy.

The residential population [downtown] also is growing, with McCarthy among them. He and his wife purchased a historic downtown loft and are completing renovations on the space.

This, of course, is exactly what William Whyte would've predicted:

Whyte, in his book City, has a great map showing that of thirty-eight companies that moved out of New York City in one period "to better meet the quality-of-life needs of their employees," thirty-one moved to the Edge City around Greenwich and Stamford, Connecticut. On Whyte's map, black circles show where the chief executive officer lived at the time the move was planned; white circles show where the new headquarters was subsequently located. Average distance from the CEO's home: eight miles. The bull's-eye, Whute reported, was a circle about four miles in diameter, bounded on the east by the Burning Tree Country Club and on the west by the Fairfield Country Club."

And although a Shoreview to Minneapolis move isn't exactly what I envisioned here, I do think that projects like the SWLRT and Eleven will help improve the image of Downtown Minneapolis specifically among this important subgroup of peoplel decision makers for big companies. It helps if they can also more easily envision themselves living there, or commuting on a train directly there.

Posted: **September 15th, 2020, 4:01 am**

That 50-acre campus off of Intestate 694

I guess there just wasn't a will to stay out in the burbs!!!

...I'll show myself out.

urbanMSP

Downtown Minneapolis Office Market

Re: Downtown Minneapolis Office Market

Re: Downtown Minneapolis Office Market

Re: Downtown Minneapolis Office Market

Re: Downtown Minneapolis Office Market

Re: Downtown Minneapolis Office Market

Re: Downtown Minneapolis Office Market

Re: Downtown Minneapolis Office Market

Re: Downtown Minneapolis Office Market

Re: Downtown Minneapolis Office Market

Re: Downtown Minneapolis Office Market

Re: Downtown Minneapolis Office Market

Re: Downtown Minneapolis Office Market

Re: Downtown Minneapolis Office Market

Re: Downtown Minneapolis Office Market

Re: Downtown Minneapolis Office Market

Re: Downtown Minneapolis Office Market

Re: Downtown Minneapolis Office Market

Re: Downtown Minneapolis Office Market

Re: Downtown Minneapolis Office Market

Re: Downtown Minneapolis Office Market