Working in a post-pandemic world is going to look and feel different.
Sure, we can expect more flexibility in our schedules – a couple days at home, a couple in the office. And perhaps a new office layout with more space, collaboration areas and amenities.
For their part, companies nationwide are still defining what the post-pandemic workplace will look like.
“The more flexible and adaptable we can make a space, the more future-proof that can be for whatever … the next pandemic, for climate change, the next cultural trend,” said Johnna Keller, director of sustainability at M+A Architects.
“The more we can make the built environment flexible and adaptable and resilient, the less we are putting that on the occupant and the person.”
Everyone from landlords and company executives to architects and developers are considering the future of the office, and there is no shortage of opinions on what we can expect if and when we return to “normal.”
Jonathan Moody, president and CEO of architecture firm Moody Nolan, said companies that have a hard time defining their culture will have a hard time explaining to employees why they should return to the office.
“Literally, the places that we create are the true drivers of the culture,” Moody said. “And that needs to ripple through the street-level experience, the office experience, the residential experience.”
Mixed-use trending
Brad DeHays, founder of Connect Realty, said he has little desire to develop large office buildings anymore. He said mixed-use spaces that include residential units make more sense.
“We need to lead with housing if we want office,” DeHays said.
A trend he sees continuing is building new Class A office space while converting Class B office buildings into multifamily or mixed-use spaces.
So does Jeff Edwards, CEO and president of Edwards Cos.
Edwards is converting about half of the 360,000-square-foot PNC Plaza building on East Broad Street downtown into residential use with some ground-floor office and retail space. The other half of the building will remain offices.
The renovation will include replacing the dark glass atrium on the ground floor with a below-grade garden connected to a restaurant.
Edwards said new office space must be interesting – inside and out – and in both urban and suburban settings.
“Building a standalone office building isn’t going to cut it anymore,” he said.
Steven Schoeny, city manager in Upper Arlington, said because many local municipalities depend on income tax revenue, mixed-use developments with office space are highly valued.
“People want walkable developments,” Schoeny said. “Not all office is created equal. Standalone, single-use office is at more of a risk than something more amenity-rich, where you can do more than just work.”
DeHays said the landscape downtown is shifting, too.
“We’re five to seven years from seeing downtown Columbus look significantly different, but those decisions that get us there are going to be made in the next 12 to 24 months,” he said.
DeHays said Intel’s recently announced plans to build factories in New Albany “breathed life” into Central Ohio and will push big changes especially in the residential market.
Edwards said many of Intel’s projected 3,000 employees might want to live in downtown Columbus and commute to the New Albany campus.
‘A blank canvas’
Although many workers in Central Ohio have yet to return to offices downtown, Columbus Development Director Michael Stevens said he is “cautiously optimistic” that they soon will.
“Employers are all trying to balance hybrid work,” he said. “We’ll still see the office, but it might take up a smaller footprint.”
Stevens said new development projects such as The Peninsula and Astor Park will do well because they offer new Class A office space in a mixed-use setting.
The Peninsula includes apartments and a hotel alongside a speculative office buidling from Daimler Group.
Daimler CEO Bob White Jr. called The Peninsula “a blank canvas” for office tenants seeking to start fresh coming out of the pandemic, especially given the flight to quality seen in today’s market.
Edwards said his own various companies had been toying with flexible work and remote work before the pandemic.
“Not everybody wants to be working from home, but everybody wants flexibility,” he said.
Safe and comfortable
Architects and interior designers say they are working to find ways to make the office environment safe and adaptable.
Karen Dwyer, director of design at Meyers and Associates, said the return to office represents a lifestyle shift, similar to the one we made when we were sent home to work.
“This is going to stay in place for quite a while,” Dwyer said. “Giving people options is just really the name of the game. It’s going to be really critical for retaining employees, as well as getting new employees.”
Tamra Fuscaldo, director of interior design at M+A, said many designers are looking at giving workers more room, more hybrid work stations and multi-use spaces.
“Designs … are actually changing to accommodate more of the bigger amenity spaces,” Fuscaldo said. “There’s a reason to come in versus just coming in to use the space. You’re collaborating more. You’re doing your heads-down work at home and coming in for a purpose.”
Dwyer said Meyers and Associates has been designing office spaces that allow for downtime or to give employees a change of scenery.
“The home office has been a huge surge, because it’s been a necessity, but also people … could embrace certain things that are comfortable for them,” she said. “And some of that has to translate back into the workplace.
“I think as much as we design spaces to be more residential or hospitality-like, we’re doing the same thing with an office,” Dwyer said. “We want to make them comfortable, we want to make them adaptable.”
She said employers will have to listen to their employees more.
“It’s not one-size-fits-all anymore,” Dwyer said.
‘We space’
Michael Copella, market leader and managing director for CBRE’s Columbus operations, also sees the market changing and adapting.
He said the future of work includes a great remote work strategy, great real estate and great human relations.
“Your technology, your values, your culture – those things really matter when you’re designing your space,” Copella said.
Many CBRE clients have said that the pandemic has solidified why having an office is important to them, Copella said. The office is key not just for business transactions, he said, but also for keeping company culture alive.
“We are hearing now more from our clients that say … ‘This has reinforced why we believe in office,’” Copella said. “It might not necessarily be the same footprint, but they’ve said now it’s kind of crystallized what the purpose of the office is.”
CBRE recently completed a study that found that the office of the future will need more “we space” – space that can be used for individual work or a gathering.
Currently only 13% of space in most offices operates as “we space.”
“We really feel that while the longer the pandemic has has gone on, it’s probably putting more stress on office, but we also feel like the best parts of the office have become more important,” Copella said.
“This idea of having the office be a space to bring people together, to have that ‘we space,’ to have it be like the physical beacon of the company’s culture and values is now more important than ever.”
Reevaluating space
At the same time, companies are trying to figure out whether they need the same amount of space that they had before the pandemic.
Sublease availability doubled from 2019 to 2021 as companies tried to right-size. In the Columbus market, there were 95 available spaces for sublease in January, representing about 1.2 million square feet, according to a Colliers report.
Matt Gregory, senior vice president with NAI Ohio Equities, said smaller, more creative sublease spaces are snatched up quickly.
Some 82% of available sublease space is less than 20,000 square feet.
Growing tech firm Upstart leased 240,000 square feet of Alliance Data’s space in Easton for seven years. And Alliance Data still has other sublease space available.
Jason Hogan, vice president of real estate and facilities services at Alliance Data, said the pandemic accelerated the company’s plans to allow more employees to work from home and consolidate its real estate.
As for the space that the company is keeping, Hogan said it is changing, too.
Alliance Data added bleacher seating for employees doing educational work, quiet pods for heads-down work and created more community spaces so employees can “bounce around,” depending on what kind of work they’re doing at the time.
“The real estate we kept, we wanted to make it encourage hybrid work, so we retooled and redesigned that space,” Hogan said. “We know that people come in and want to do different kinds of work. So we created different kinds of spaces that enable those kinds of work.”
American Electric Power Co. also is subleasing some space in its portfolio. AEP has subleased 12,000 square feet at its Rich Street location and has vacated about 65,000 square feet at 825 Tech Center Dr., according to CoStar.
Therace Risch, chief information and technology officer for the utility company, said although AEP reopened offices in November, the ensuing rise in Covid cases sent many of them home again.
“This is a learning period,” she said.
Risch said because there is a bigger push for collaborative spaces in AEP offices, the company is looking into removing cubicles and improving technology in conference spaces.
In April 2020, Columbus-based insurance giant Nationwide said it would be closing many of its smaller regional hubs, including offices in Gainesville, Florida; Harleysville, Pennsylvania; Raleigh, North Carolina; Wausau, Wisconsin; and Richmond, Virginia.
And Nationwide recently sold its office complex in San Antonio, Texas, with plans to lease back some of its square footage inside.
Nationwide also put about 300,000 square feet in the Arena District and Grandview Yard up for sublease, according to CoStar.
Vinita Clements, chief human relations officer at Nationwide, said the company also is considering more open floor plans and has a rotating schedule for employees to come into the office so that safe distances can be maintained.
The insurance giant has announced a new permanent hybrid work policy.
Before, about 18% of Nationwide employees worked from home.
Now about half do.
Nationwide continually surveys employees to learn about how they want to work and what they hope to gain from work.
That effort led to the creation of a “future of work” online education series that offers employees virtual classes to learn new skills.
Clements said Nationwide views its facilities as an extension of the company’s culture.
“We are the culture,” Clements said.
Much as it has solidified for companies why having an office of some sort is important, the pandemic has helped companies realize why their people are important – even if they don’t see them every day.