Like a bear waking up from hibernation, today’s executives are coming out of their luxurious private offices and joining their workforce on open floor plates. Private corner offices are becoming a thing of the past as they are appropriated for shared amenity space.
The open space plans, see-over cubicles and long benching areas are similar to the setup used by former Mayor Mike Bloomberg when he parked himself in the middle of the action at City Hall.
By contrast, the decision by Mayor Bill de Blasio to use former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s massive office for himself is contrary to the new progressive management style being adopted by the city’s companies.
“Rents in New York City continue to escalate and the companies can do more with less space,” said Marc Spector, an architect and principal of The Spector Group. “It’s an absolute trend of pulling them out of larger offices and work spaces into ergonomic benching.”
As a side effect of all the elbow rubbing, architects are now designing more private telephone or conference room areas where workers can have a little privacy — and in some cases, take politics out of the corner office by reconfiguring them as conference rooms.
“When you take them out of offices and into work stations you have to provide them other areas to have the quiet time and heads down time away from their desks,” said Spector who calls them “Touch Down” spaces. “We use the term regularly now in describing to clients how to keep the employees happy.”
To keep the back-stabbing to a minimum, corporations are also shying away from assigning corner offices and are instead using them as meeting rooms. “It is not politics but a buy in (to the idea) by senior executives that goes towards increasing efficiencies and driving down operating costs,” explained Mitchell Konsker, vice chairman of Jones Lang LaSalle who represents both building owners and tenants in deals for office spaces. “For every deal I am looking at, the companies are looking at their space studies and they are still compressing the size of their standards, and that affects the bottom line.”
As the size of the offices and bullpen areas compress, Konsker said the companies are providing about 30 percent more in amenities that include conference areas, meeting spaces, and large open cafes, with many of them, including the reception areas, doubling as entertainment spaces.
“We are seeing a 25 percent to 30 percent drop in the size of the private offices,” agreed Spector. Associate-sized offices that were previously 12-by-15 are now 10-by-12 or 9.5-by-11, depending on the building, the core and how the offices lay out between the columns and windows.
Konsker sees companies looking at workplace strategies that include benching versus open bullpen versus smaller 6-by-6 cubicles. “Instead of having three sizes of offices it’s down to one or two sizes of offices,” Konsker said.
Whether in high-end Midtown offices or utilitarian tech spaces in Midtown South, the new designs have more open ceilings and a more industrial look.
Konsker’s own space in Jones Lang LaSalle’s new open plan offices at 330 Madison also has an unusual cantilevered ceiling.
He is representing 650 Madison Ave. where a new ownership group created prebuilt offices with open ceilings, which gave one of the highest end Midtown office environments an industrial look — and recently obtained a lofty $150 per foot rent for the space.
“The tenants are trying to recreate the polished floor slab and not have hung ceilings but are still giving their employees high-end amenities,” said Konsker, who declined to discuss the pricing on the 650 Madison lease.
Investment sales broker Nat Rockett, an executive vice president in the Capital Market Group at Cushman & Wakefield, said the issue of “densification” comes up with investors as they conduct due diligence on the purchase of office buildings. “If the employees don’t like it and they have turnover, then the HR people will kill it,” Rockett predicted. “We talk about how a building will respond to the densification and if the pendulum swings back, is that going to be a problem (for the building owner) in renting the space?”
Marc Spector’s architect brother and partner, Scott Spector, says he isn’t worried about a blow-back from up-and-coming executives who may start feeling their oats and request a private office as a perk. “I don’t foresee it based on what we are programming for tenants right now that are signing five- and 10-year leases,” he said.
To keep the executives happy while they are uprooted from their offices, some of the leadership is moving into what he called a “Leadership Hub” zone. This area has five to ten work positions for senior managers and a dedicated conference room for when they need privacy.
“We are seeing them come out of the offices to more collaborative environments,” he said.
True, the top executive may take over two positions or desk areas rather than one, and there are cases where the CEO still has a private office. Lawyers and financial services companies that handle or have to discuss sensitive client or company information are also still stuck behind walls — although they are more likely to be walls of glass.
Scott said designing for a law firm is very different than for a next step media company.
“But they are thinking about it because it’s the next group coming up that is looking for this collaborative environment,” he said.