The new way of working has yet another tech company swapping its space for something smaller in Downtown Raleigh.
This time it’s Brooks Bell, a 30-person consulting firm serving the tech industry, that has more than halved its space by moving from its longtime headquarters on Hillsborough Street to the Capital Club building on Martin Street. The move shrinks the firm’s footprint from 9,200 square feet to 3,900 square feet.
Though a lease addition in January will swell the firm’s footprint to an entire floor of the Capital Club building, CEO Greg Ng admits it’s a smaller space than the team is used to.
“It just didn’t meet the needs that we have today,” Ng said of the Hillsborough space, an open office plan that didn't fit with the Zoom calls that would be an ongoing fixture after Covid.
A national construction firm is moving into Brooks Bell's former space to establish its Southeast headquarters.
Brooks Bell, like a lot of Triangle firms, is operating as a hybrid shop, with about half of its employees working outside of the Triangle and interacting remotely.
That means less space is needed.
“We made this commitment as early as 2021,” Ng said. “We will never force a return to office. I really believe in the flexibility and different working styles that my team members have.”
Brooks Bell isn’t alone in its decision.
Data released by McKinsey earlier this year that surveyed 25,000 Americans in spring of 2022 showed 58 percent of workers had the opportunity to work from home at least one day a week; 35 percent had the option to work from home five days a week. When people have the chance to work flexibly, 87 percent of them take it, the survey found.
The impact is being felt when it comes to commercial real estate where, as of Savills’ September report, the amount of office space up for sublease in the Triangle sits around 4.1 million square feet. The Triangle region has 8 million square feet of vacant office space, bringing the total amount of empty office space to about 12 million square feet as some companies elect to shrink their space, or vacate entirely.
Big names to leave their sizable operations behind include Citrix, which put its entire office building in Downtown Raleigh up for sublease earlier this year.
Ng’s company still believes in office space as a necessary expense, he said. Brooks Bell’s new space has individual offices – which are prioritized for employees committing to coming in three days each week.
Brooks Bell flies in all team members once a quarter and requires local new hires to come in at least three times a week initially – “great for onboarding and culture building,” Ng said.
“We do believe in in-person collaboration,” he said.
