A management consulting firm, Evarts Tremaine, was in need of a new office that more accurately reflected the organization’s unique culture, supplemented the attraction and retention of talent, and afforded the organization room to grow without negatively impacting the bottom line.
Evarts Tremaine hired Allegro to help them identify a new office and address the challenges described above. In addition to the traditional threads of work associated with a tenant representation project of this scope, Allegro worked very closely with the client’s entire team to help give everyone a chance to be part of the process. As a reflection of their dedication to creating an environment that perpetuates the organization’s culture, the client’s principals felt strongly about integrating employee input into the real estate decision process. To facilitate the collection of data, Allegro created a customized survey and conducted interviews with small employee groups to identify the most critical factors to creating a functional work environment. Based on this employee feedback and utilizing deep community relationships, Allegro developed a tour list that included a variety of creative options, some of which were not even being actively marketed. After narrowing the options to two finalists, Allegro developed a customized RFP to facilitate an apples-to-apples quantitative analysis of the two finalists and built financial models to help the client understand the economic factors affecting each deal. Simultaneously, Allegro assisted the client in completing a qualitative comparison by evaluating each space’s attributes and its alignment with the key decision drivers derived from the employee surveys.
This dual qualitative/quantitative approach resulted in the selection of Evart Tremaine’s preferred option, a unique office space in an inner ring suburban environment. The space offered many of the amenities that the employees and principals desired and could be built-out to meet the organization’s functional space needs. However, the space presented a few economic challenges – the 25% increase in square footage would have a significant impact on annual occupancy costs and the raw condition of the space would require a full build-out, which would also increase rent and could delay occupancy. Allegro’s financial analysis allowed the client to fully understand the economic impact of its preferred location and laid the ground for negotiating a forgivable loan from the City. The resulting transaction actually reduced occupancy costs as compared to its existing lease and provided the organization with a larger, more functional office space that allows the organization to grow. Most importantly, the client’s new space successfully reinforces the firm’s culture by integrating much-needed collaboration and meeting spaces into a functional layout, allowing the team to work more effectively.