When IBM moved into its new downtown office space earlier this summer, it left a 30,000-square-foot hole in the local office market that real estate agents are scrambling to fill. For two years, IBM leased 30,000 square feet of temporary office space in the Essen Centre building at 5353 Essen Lane. That space is now vacant, and though several potential tenants have expressed an interest in it, no deal has been finalized.
Property manager Norman Bacon says he would like to find a single tenant to lease at least one of the one-and-a-half floors IBM had occupied in the building. So far, he hasn’t found anybody, but he has been in discussions with the U.S. General Services Administration about leasing smaller portions of the space.
“We’re actively marketing it and eager to find a long-term home for everybody,” Bacon says.
The space is being listed at $24 per square foot. Bacon says that’s a good deal, especially considering that the space was newly renovated before IBM moved in in 2013 and was upgraded with a state-of-the-art fiber-optic network.
“They were only here a couple of years, and one the byproducts of their presence in our building was the addition of fiber-optic telecommunications,” he says. “So we have a major hub sitting here and nobody using it.”
