New owners of old office towers in Charlotte make $42 million bet on getting workers back
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Uptown Remodel
Charlotte’s iconic towers in uptown are aiming to make a comeback post pandemic with new renovations to bring workers back to the office.
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Christopher Whiteman’s desk inside his company’s 12th floor, 4,000-square-foot office in uptown gives sweeping views of the Charlotte skyline. He just doesn’t have anyone to share them with.
At least for now.
Whiteman’s company, a business consulting firm called Blue Ops, expanded from the Midwest to Charlotte when it signed a lease a couple months ago at One Independence Center. A managing director, Whiteman is employee No. 1 but will soon be joined by 20 to 30 coworkers.
Blue Ops’ decision to expand to Charlotte at one of the city’s most central and recognizable addresses — at the Square at Trade and Tryon — comes as uptown continues to navigate a comeback from the pandemic.
But core challenges remain for employers. Take, for instance, this question: How do you entice workers back to the office, even for a day or two, when they’ve found the benefits of flexibility of remote work?
The owners of One Independence Center, a 20-story tower that was finished in 1983, and two other decades-old Charlotte office towers, think they have the answer.
It requires centering design of the spaces throughout the building with the employee in mind first, not the employer, the building’s landlords told The Charlotte Observer. That means creating an experience for workers that goes beyond simply reporting to the cubicle.
One Wells Fargo Center, nicknamed the jukebox building, and One South, also on the Square, are two more examples of office towers in uptown undergoing multi-million dollar upgrades under new ownership.
In all, the new building landlords are spending about $42 million on upgrades. It’s a doubling down of sorts, a gamble that after updating the office spaces with cafes, balconies, more retail spaces and even a golf simulator, employers will sign leases and workers will come back.
“We’re not a bunch of octogenarians running around,” said Jeff Fronek, 34, managing principal and president of Tourmaline Capital Partners, a Philadelphia-based real estate investment firm that bought One South last August for more than $270 million. “We haven’t been living out of the 60th floor corner office for the last 40 years doing one thing.
“We have a really good finger on the pulse of what employees want and need,” Fronek added. “Our friends and peers are the people that all these companies are trying to recruit and retain.”
Tourmaline and New York-based Monarch Capital Partners partnered on the purchase of the building.
They spent $7 million completely rebuilding what used to be a third floor occupied by Bank of America into a 23,000-square-foot tenant amenity space. That came with comfy seating, windows that open out onto the Square and plenty of workspace to meet with colleagues or put your head down and work.
For Whiteman, uptown felt like a natural place for his company Blue Ops to be.
The big banks the company works with are close by. Plus, employees will be able to easily go out and grab lunch or enjoy the updated building space.
“There was kind of a buzz that really attracted us,” Whiteman said. “It’s a real draw for recruiting.” It’s nice that when you’re in the building it doesn’t feel like it’s 30 or 40 years old, Whiteman added.
Here’s a look at what is happening at each of the three buildings, and what the new landlords say is driving their decisions.
One Independence Center
Building fast facts
- 101 N. Tryon St.
- Built in 1983
- 20 stories
- Last sold in June 2019 to Crescent Communities for $132.25 million
One Independence Center doesn’t make the list of Charlotte’s tallest office towers. But it has one of the city’s choicest locations.
That’s a big reason why Crescent Communities bought the building a few years ago, said Sagar Rathie, managing director of office at Crescent. But the prominent Charlotte-based developer knew the building, which is right off a CityLYNX Gold Line stop and has the popular coffee shop Coco and the Director and Marriott hotel as neighbors, needed some upgrades.
Crescent is partnering with Nuveen Real Estate on renovations. They’ve spent $25 million on upgrades. One big thing the team focused on was the interior lobby space.
“Walking outside you’d have no idea anything has changed since the ‘80s,” Rathie said.
Over the past two years, crews shifted the entrance slightly over to a wide open, glass atrium space. Crescent brought in new furniture and lighting with the idea that employees could take a quick call, have an impromptu run-in with a coworker or find a different place to work other than their upstairs office, Rathie said.
There’s also a new co-working room called Spaces on the ground floor tenants can use.
Crescent worked with its multifamily development team because it wanted to focus more on the individual user, not just the company responsible for signing the lease, Rathie said. He wanted the lobby space to be an inviting stopping point as opposed to an entrance to quickly walk through.
“Now more than ever employees have a choice of whether they want to be in the office or not,” Rathie said. “We’re trying to create a desire for people to make their own decisions to be in the office.”
Crescent and Nuveen also have plans to bring in plenty of new food and beverage space onto the ground floor, namely along North Tryon Street. By shifting the entrance, they’ve created 8,000 square feet of retail space that fronts the Square. The names of retailers are expected to be announced soon.
Other updates include building out speculative office suites for tenants on the 12th floor. Bank of London, a UK clearing bank, will take up space on a lower floor where Crescent and Nuveen built out a balcony that overlooks the Square.
One South
Building fast facts
- 101 S. Tryon St.
- Built in 1974
- 40 stories
- Last sold in August 2021 to Monarch Alternative Capital and Tourmaline Capital Partners for $271.5 million
The real estate investors who bought this tower on uptown’s Square thought the way that work was being done has been changing well before the pandemic.
Today’s office worker looks for collaborative places to meet with colleagues to brainstorm and innovate. The old office tower design with massive floor plates and cube farms was becoming a thing of the past.
“The workplace didn’t catch up with that,” said Fronek with Tourmaline Capital.
Tourmaline’s bet was that the landlord could step in and add more value for employers and their workers.
Enter the newly-designed third floor of One South.
Once you exit the elevators, you’re greeted with an open space that has tall windows and natural lighting. Formerly occupied by Bank of America, Tourmaline has been building out the space over the past year.
There is comfortable seating, tables to put your laptop down and work, and a shuffleboard table as you walk further back.
The landlords also built a concierge’s desk. They want to bring a hospitality component to the building, much like a hotel. They went as far as hiring DJ Cardenas, who used to work across the street at Marriott, as general manager, as well as a new events manager, Nicole Rice.
The third floor has a cafe and a connection lab with a 110-inch LED screen that can be used for team meetings if someone is participating remotely.
“It could be a movie theater,” Fronek said during a tour of the floor.
A simulator will let employees hit golf balls (it also has simulated dodgeball, baseball, football and soccer). Fronek said he and his team are working on creating a golf league, similar to an after-work dodgeball or softball league.
Employees who work in the building will be able to download an app on their phones customized for the building.
They can order food and have it brought to where they’re sitting. A quick peek at the menu showed options for yogurt parfait and avocado toast. The cafe area will have a barista working all day plus a bartender for after-work happy hours.
The app also can be used to reserve any of the rooms, including one of two wellness rooms and a streaming podcast studio.
The goal, Fronek said, is that prospective tenants will see they can get a richer experience at the building compared to others. He hopes that employees will feel like they’re being invested in when their companies sign a lease.
“If the bottom of the totem pole is, ‘I’m gonna come to the office because my cube is there,’ that’s not a very compelling reason to leave home,” Fronek said.
“But if it’s, ‘I can go to work and meet with my colleagues, host some friends for a happy hour, if I can go and hit some golf balls during lunch and having lunch outside on the plaza and go to dinner nearby,’ that’s obviously more worth it to show up.”
One Wells Fargo Center
Building fast facts
- 301 S. College St.
- Built in 1988
- 42 stories
- Last sold in March 2016 to an LLC affiliated with Nevada businessman Dennis Troesch for $284 million. Tampa-based Vision Properties is the managing and operating entity in the building’s ownership.
The 1 million-square foot office building can’t be missed. Its jukebox-like design is among the tallest buildings in Charlotte — and one of the most iconic.
As many as 3,000 bank employees used to work out of the building, which was developed by Childress Klein for Wells Fargo’s predecessor, First Union. Today, the building is undergoing a number of changes.
Chief among them: remaking the top two floors into an amenity space for tenants. It’s a different step because common space is more typically found at the ground level, said Jessica Brown and David Dorsch at Cushman & Wakefield. The commercial real estate firm is responsible for leasing the building out.
Crews are finishing up work on bringing lounge-type seating, a space for billiards, a conference room and multi-purpose space. The top floors also have terraces and windscreens for people to go outside.
These top two floors were traditionally office spaces for executives as well as big conference rooms for meetings, Brown said. The new furniture and setup will modernize the space for the first time in a long time.
“We don’t want it to be like your dad’s country club,” Brown said.
Recently, the building updated its lobby, including with new furniture and bringing in a new coffee shop, Night Swim. The building is connected to the Overstreet Mall, an indoor walking connection with shopping and food that runs between a number of uptown building. The building also is home to a YMCA.
By the end of the year, work is expected to finish on a new outdoor plaza on the ground floor, at the corner of South College and E. 3rd streets. Vision Properties, which is based in Tampa, Florida, invested $10 million in renovations last year.
The changes One Wells Fargo Center is going through is a recognition that Charlotte’s older buildings will evolve with time as do the desires of the folks working there, said David Pitser, Childress Klein partner and property manager at One Wells Fargo Center.
“We’re seeing a post-pandemic emphasis on the quality of work-life balance,” Pitser said. “And having things that make your work life easier.”
Whether that’s having dining or shops nearby, the focus, Pitser said, is more about how to make the workplace fun.
This story was originally published November 22, 2022 at 5:50 AM.
