OLD OFFICE-PARKS BECOME NEW URBAN LIVING SPACES

...An old vacant, office park garage

Those old business parks can become a vibrant neighborhood and living space.

As we here in Silicon Valley watch old concrete tilt-ups, single story buildings being demolished, only to be replaced by six or seven story glass corporate headquarters buildings, something different is happening in other parts of the country.

From Washington and New York suburbs to North Carolina’s famous Research Triangle Park, old traditional corporate campuses have been struggling since the Great Recession.  But they are now in the process of being transformed into vibrant mini-communities.  In addition to providing housing, they’ve added restaurants, grocery stores, playgrounds and outdoor concert spaces.  This has drawn many people into new living spaces that makes them want to move in and call them “home”.

Keisuke and Idalia Yabe now live in a rooftop terrace townhouse with their daughter Mela and their dog.  The new town home is in a quiet former office park in North Bethesda, Maryland. 

The Yabes say they now have the advantages of urban living with a much shorter commute and the ability to walk to local shopping centers and a beautiful park. They also have what feels like the best of suburbia with all the mature trees, plentiful parking, Bethesda’s sought-after schools and a much more affordable mortgage

What was before an abandoned, 1970s-era office-park of tall glass office buildings and concrete parking garages, is now a vibrant Maryland neighborhood for living and raising a family.

“For me, if anything, it’s pretty cool,’ ” said Keisuke’s wife, Idalia Yabe, “I think the former office setting makes it seem like we’re in a kind of city, not in the suburbs.”

The reality is that those here in Silicon Valley could learn that those former old suburban office parks that were becoming just another local “ghost town”, could possibly be transformed into attractive urban living spaces.  Yes, it takes some creativity, but it has been proven many times that it’s certainly doable.”

The demand for more housing in many urban areas continues to grow as the local single-family real estate values continue to climb.  Due to that increasing cost, more families are buying homes further from where they work and thus, the increasing problem of commuter traffic from home to work and the reverse.  It calls for more traffic, more heavy use on the roads and Interstates and more demand for local parking spaces.  

As a perfect example, the new Apple space–ship shaped headquarters building here in Silicon Valley is larger than the US Pentagon.  It will have over 13,000 employees and already has over 11,000 parking spaces in its huge garages.  It also has space for up to 50 luxury buses that will make daily runs up the peninsula to San Francisco, transporting their employees in these up-scale high-tech buses to the new Apple headquarters facility.

Wouldn’t it be great to instead purchase a town home at a more reasonable price and to be able to walk to work or to ride local public transportation to work or school?

Once an elite address for companies fleeing downtowns, suburban office parks have grown increasingly obsolete as businesses have scaled back on office space or returned to transit-rich cities to attract young professionals. Those reachable only by car or bus have been particularly hard hit. In Rock Spring Park, where the Yabes live, the office/commercial vacancy rate has hovered around 22%, compared with 15% across the rest of the county.

Montgomery County officials were caught off guard in 2015 when Marriott International, one of the county’s largest private employers, announced it would be moving its headquarters out of Rock Spring Park.  This is because they needed a more urban, transit-friendly area to attract younger workers. Marriott is building a new headquarters, in of all places, in downtown Bethesda, walkable to the Metro subway and the planned light-rail Purple Transit Line. When Marriott moves out, county planners say, Rock Spring’s vacancy rate could jump to 39%.

“We’re not planning to tear down all those buildings, so we have to reimagine them?” said Bob Geolas, former chief executive of the Research Triangle Foundation, which manages the 7,000-acre Research Triangle Park in Raleigh, North Carolina. “I think it’s a real opportunity for the suburbs to make a hip comeback.”  But as companies move into more cities, suburban towns like Raleigh are left to scramble. 

EYA, the company developing the Bethesda Montgomery Row housing complex, embraced the Rock Spring’s corporate address, said McLean Quinn, an EYA vice president. In addition to Marriott, the office park still includes Lockheed Martin, the National Institutes of Health facilities and dozens of doctor’s offices.

The new townhouses do range from about $750,000 to $1 million, although some are priced at below-market rates under county requirements for “moderately priced” housing. Of the 168 homes, 89 have sold to date.

“Like anything else in real estate, it’s all location,” a local Real Estate salesman said. “The Garden State Parkway is right there, it’s a half-hour to the Jersey Shore, 50 minutes to Manhattan — it’s just an incredible location.  Such large tracts of open land in high-demand suburbs, are few and far between.”

But for all its modern design and quasi-urban feel, the Montgomery Row residents have plenty of reminders that they live where thousands of other people still work.  During the daily breaks and lunch periods, many workers can still be seen during the day wearing their worker's ID badges.

Tom Pariser, 57, said the area is just what he and his wife were looking for when they wanted to downsize after their three grown children had moved out of their Alexandria house. He said they like being able to walk more and drive less. And his wife’s six-minute walking commute to her job in the office park sure beats the hours she used to slog through commuter traffic.

Pariser said he expects the area will feel more residential soon, particularly once Marriott's campus is redeveloped, likely into some offices, restaurants, shops and of course, more homes.

“You don’t feel like you’re in deepest, darkest suburbia here,” Pariser said. “I think you’re looking at the beginning of the transformation.”

The world of business and of living spaces is changing at a very fast pace.  By the time I am in a retirement home or as my wife says, “under the dirt”, the living space for American technology workers will look more like a Jetson’s cartoon of the future, than it does today.  

I can hardly wait…

Copyright G.Ater  2017