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The big story in the Indianapolis office market is not the latest change in the occupancy rate or rents, but rather the desire by landlords and tenants to create a sense of place. Connectivity and collaboration, amenities and perks, as well as talent recruitment and retention have taken on a heightened importance. Interestingly, these buzzwords are used just as frequently when assessing corporate real estate as they are in the human resources department.
Employees today look for their work experience to offer something more than a desktop. They look for connectivity to diverse and conveniently located amenities within walking distance. They want easy access to biking and walking trails and fitness facilities. They seek open collaborative workstations, game rooms, huddle rooms, bike storage, as well as showers and lockers. Their desires are influencing real estate development and the locations employers ultimately select. There is ample evidence of these trends in Indianapolis.
Thanks to the wisdom of the city’s early founders and more recently key city officials, Indianapolis enjoys a condensed city core. Its downtown already has the framework to offer up an easy-to-connect experience, recently enhanced with a world-class urban bike and pedestrian path connecting neighborhoods, cultural districts and other entertainment amenities.
With the growing demand for the work/live/play lifestyle, corporate tenants are realizing the need to adjust their work environment to attract and retain top talent. Likewise, owners and developers in Indianapolis are retooling to attract key top tenants via mixed-use developments and other creative offerings within more traditional projects.
In downtown, projects targeted toward this office trend include new single-building projects, large-scale campus developments and specialty-use redevelopment.
Notable projects include:
16-Tech: This is a master-planned, 17-acre area targeting advanced technology and life sciences users. The campus boasts $1.5 billion in private and public sector projects to create a walk-and-ride, work-to-play experience. 16-Tech sits adjacent to the expanding campus of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), Indiana University’s medical development zone, and is surrounded by a cluster of healthcare facilities.
CityWay: The all-new mixed-use development spans four blocks and provides some of the best views of the downtown skyline. Targeted toward corporate users and visitors, the project taps into nearby corporate campuses of the city’s four primary employers: Rolls-Royce, Eli Lilly, WellPoint and Farm Bureau. In addition to delivering fresh Class A office product for that underserved corner of downtown, the four-block area is jammed with art and culture offerings. The Alexander, an upscale 204-room hotel; 250 luxury apartment units; a 75,000 square foot YMCA, extended-stay suites, great green space; welcomed additional parking garages; and numerous dining and convenience amenities.
The Axis: This mixed-use project under development in the heart of downtown will include a Marsh grocery, a 400-unit apartment building, a 930-space parking garage, and additional retail. This $85 million project replaces one of the city’s last remaining surface parking lots in the central business district.
Indianapolis Star Site: The Gannett-owned 307,320-square-foot headquarters building and adjoining seven-story parking garage are for sale. Due to reuse challenges, the existing facility is expected to go the demolition route with the garage likely staying. The prime location of this four-acre property has generated considerable interest from developers toward a mixed-use-development to include office.
Artistry: A former Bank One operations center is being transformed into 258 apartments and approximately 70,000 square feet of commercial space in the first phase. A second phase will add 200 apartment units. Plans for the LEED-certified building include, but are not limited to, an art gallery, theater, café, wellness studio, and vegetable gardens.
Individually, these high-stakes projects are catalysts in their immediate area to further link employers, residents and retailers as part of the growing work-live-play trend and cater to the employee recruitment and retention need. Collectively, it becomes a game-changing dynamic for the office market.
The new construction provides developers with a well-timed opportunity to incorporate the workplace perks that employees value today and reinforce the quality of life Indy offers. By doing so, developers can attract key corporate users to their more modern, environmentally friendly digs. To compete, owners of existing buildings are carving out building improvement opportunities to retain tenants and create an engaging workplace.
In a nutshell, cool workspace has become key to employee recruitment and retention, which in turn has become key to tenant recruitment and retention.
— Rich Forslund, executive vice president, office advisory services, Summit Realty Group/Cushman & Wakefield, and Matt Langfeldt, executive vice president, office advisory services, Summit Realty Group/Cushman & Wakefield