urbanMSP

Personally, I wish there was more of a priority to attracting jobs Downtown. There are reasons employers stay away and I wish the city would help either remove those barriers or promote the benefits of being located Downtown. I think the SWLRT might help a bit too making it easier for commuters. In the long-term job growth Downtown is what we need to decrease the vacancy rate.

Downtown's new places could mean lots of empty spaces

Interesting read. Of note, was the information about suburban employers still looking to move downtown...

If landlords are worried, their leasing agents aren’t showing it. Reed Christianson, a Transwestern broker who is leasing several downtown buildings, said he has a list of suburban firms that are collectively looking for 1 million square feet of office space in the central business district. He also predicts that Fifth Street Towers and Baker Center — two of Transwestern's assignments and the two biggest vacancies downtown — will be 90 percent leased by the end of the year.

Jim Vos, a Cresa broker who represents tenants, said he sees no end to the migration of suburban companies to downtown Minneapolis.

The impression I have is that companies do want to be downtown, but in high-quality spaces, hence the disconnect between Class A and B space. Which I can understand, especially since a big part of the reason for being downtown is image and attracting employees. There's not as much benefit if your company has a plain old cube farm office that is the same as in any suburban office park, and thus not as much benefit to paying the extra money for the location.

Since there's an overabundance of Class B office space and a shortage of housing, everyone talking about conversions of office space to residential units is on the right track. Here are some criteria:

1) The Class B office space has to be struggling. This rules out the Medical Arts Building, which is doing well as a medical office building. If it ain't broke....

2) The floor plates (and especially for high-end conversions) the style of the building must be appealing to potential buyers and investors.

I'm short on details, but over the past couple of years, several buildings of this sort have been proposed for conversion. One is the Rockler Fur Building on North 4th Street off of Hennepin. A proposal for this building showed up back in Spring 2016, but we've heard nothing about it in a long time. It could be that this one is in such rough shape that the costs of fixing it up are unjustifiable.

Another is the Northstar East Building, the quarter of the block built back in 1916. This was likewise proposed for conversion to housing back in Spring 2016. With the Northstar block coming back on the market, perhaps this element of the previous plan could make a reappearance.

There are a few other buildings that, at a glance, also look appealing. One is the 12-story, 1929 structure at 15 South 5th Street, across the light rail line from the Lumber Exchange Building.

A second is the Baker Building. It's beautiful, and judging by the number of lit windows, it seems to have a fair number of tenants. Still, since the complex of offices on this block was hit hard by the Wells Fargo move, it could be that a bit of shuffling of leases might open this one up.

Lastly, there's the Pence Building at 800 Hennepin, which Art Institutes International is vacating. The building just across the street, of similar size, is now City Place Lofts. Maybe there's a future for the Pence Building, too, as affordable housing.

I'm interested in hearing how you might add to these criteria and what other Class B office space you consider ripe for conversion.

Anyone know anything about the Old Republic Title Builidng on 2nd Ave and 4th St? With little knowledge on occupancy, I feel the location, floor plates and aesthetics could make for a nice residential conversion.

Amplifon is planning to have a car on site in case someone who took transit needs to, for example, pick up a sick child.

This is big. I've got several co-workers who's stated reason for passing up the company-subsidized Metropass in favor of driving downtown and paying to park daily is the fear of not being able to go pick up a kid from school.

That’s a smart move for any large downtown employer that wants to get more employees on transit. “Ability to leave mid-day to pick up a sick kid” is definitely high on the list of reasons people give for not taking the bus. It wouldn’t be a bad idea for Metro Transit / Move Minneapolis to think about buying a small fleet (10-20?) of cheap cars for this very purpose. The cost would pale in comparison to the societal cost of not getting these people on transit and off the freeways every day.

Metropass from Metro Transit (via my employer) reimburses up to $100/year for alternate transport (cab/uber, etc). Nice perk. Maybe they could increase that amount.

They have a program called "Guaranteed Ride Home" that fills this need. I've never had to use it, but I am glad I know it exists.
https://www.metrotransit.org/guaranteed-ride-home

Who is eligible?
To be eligible for Guaranteed Ride Home you must:
•Ride the bus, METRO or Northstar, or carpool, vanpool, bicycle or walk to work or school at least three times per week.
•Pre-register for the program.
•Have an email address and internet access.

What type of trips are eligible?
•Unexpected overtime that forces you to miss your bus, train, carpool or vanpool.
•You become ill and need to leave work or school early.
•An immediate family member becomes ill and needs to be picked up early from daycare, school or work.
•Your carpool or vanpool driver unexpectedly needs to leave work early or stay late.

Right, but that’s for a cab ride only. If you think it through, that would mean a long cab ride home, then getting in a personal vehicle (assuming your family has one available) and then possibly heading in another direction to the kid’s school. No one is taking the cab right to the kid's school and then home or the doctor. And then you have to mess around with a receipt, wait to get reimbursed, etc. Guaranteed Ride Home is a nice fallback option for someone working late and missing the last bus home, but it's a poor match for the sick kid scenario.

I think most folks would greatly prefer being able to get in a loaner car right from the office (or maybe a couple skyway links away to a parking ramp with the free pool car I suggested) and then drive yourself directly to the kid’s school in that vehicle. The pool vehicle would be due back in its assigned space at 9am the next day

Disappointed they didn't specify the conditions for a motorcyclepool.

Just talked to a friend with Optum and we were talking about their new office park. He mentioned they would have preferred to be downtown, but went with the standard suburban office park because of PR image. Talked about had they built a big new tower downtown like they would have preferred, that many people would have been up in arms about how a health insurance company has all the money to build fancy buildings. Just something I thought was interesting and explains why the continue to expand in the suburbs instead of moving downtown.

That's... unfortunate. I get that reasoning, but that sucks, both for downtown and for Optum's employees/recruiting.

Suboptimal, one might say.

This is disappointing given that United Healthcare/Optum is probably the business here that can best afford the kind of tower we dream of seeing Downtown. The mayor or other business leaders need to work to get them Downtown.

I understand from friends and former co-workers (now at Optum) that many of their employees would rather be downtown. They could keep a lot of "back-office" space in EP while moving corporate, marketing, finance, real estate, etc. downtown. We can dream.

Speaking of insurance companies moving downtown.

Country Financial moving 130 jobs from Arden Hills into Fifth Street Towers.

It seems to me that as the Twin Cities expands outward Downtown is logistically a good place to be located given that employees can commute from across the Twin Cities. ie. it's easier to go from N. Metro to Downtown then from N. Metro to S. Metro or far E. or W. Metro. When I worked at Land O' Lakes the traffic was terrible and there were often crashes on Lexington. You'll literally have to go past totaled cars as you left the company lot. Albeit I biked and avoided the traffic.

Atomic Data will be moving their North Loop office to a larger space in Marquette Plaza. (locked)

The lead is about parking concerns in the North Loop, but I suspect this is really more about having room to grow and consolidating their DT Minneapolis operations, as they've had their data center in the Marquette Plaza basement for at least five years.