Whatever your responses are to these questions, what we'd really like to know is: How do you know?


Looking for answers to the questions about corporate real estate best practices? You've come to the right place.


What is your Total Occupancy Cost of facilities beyond rent and including all related furniture, fixtures, equipment, and technology costs? What percentage is that of your total SG&A(Sales, General, & Administrative) expenses?


How good are you at managing your corporate real estate opportunities?


What are your most/least efficient facilities and what makes them so?


What is your cost/occupied seat of your corporate offices? What percentage of this cost is spent on unutilized space?


How do your facility metrics compare to those of your competitors?


Are your service providers applying best practices to provide you with a competitive edge?
 
Sunday
Feb052012

Commercial Real Estate Terminology

The Alliance of Tenant Representatives is dedicated to educating and exclusively serving commercial real estate tenants throughout the country. As part of that effort, we're starting an occasional real estate glossary series to help company leaders better understand the lexicon of this critical business operation. 

Abatement: Free rent that can come in a number of forms, such as early occupancy, discounted number of months or additional months at the end of a term. Still calculated as part of the overall value of the lease. 

Below grade: Any space or part of a building that is under ground. Parking garages may be below grade. 

Carrying Charges: Costs incurred by a landlord during terms of vacancy outside of taxes and insurance. It's also used to describe general operating costs for a building during "lease-up" and typically does not include charges related to maintenance. 

Circulation Factor: A term most often used by space planners to define the square footage absorbed by the need for traffic around furniture and office equipment, such as lanes, hallways and employee "travel patterns." 

Demising Walls: The primary walls that separate leased tenants from one another or building common areas; not walls between offices or rooms within a contiguous space. 

Economic Rent: The realistic assessment of the value of an office space on the current rental market when all concessions and disparate market factors are considered. This is often used during times of market instability, when actual quoted rates are rarely what's agreed to. 

Master Lease: A type of lease that has other leases subservient to it with multiple units or individual properties controlled by the same lease. A master lease is not the same as a sublease. The terms for each asset in a master lease are often the same. 

More terminology can be found in future ATR newsletters. If you ever have a question about your lease or a term your landlord mentions, don't hesitate to contact your ATR member representative. 

Friday
Jan272012

PRESS RELEASE

SEPTEMBER 2011

Unitrin leases office space in Plymouth Meeting, PA and Chattanooga, TN

Gola Corporate Real Estate exclusively represented Unitrin Direct for their Plymouth Meeting,
PA and Chattanooga, TN locations in a comprehensive search in both office markets. After short
listing to multiple buildings, Gola was able to leverage an early renewal negating the last year
of rent on the original deal and reducing the per square foot rent by approximately twenty
percent on both leases.

Gola’s in-house project team was integral in creating the space program, relocation budget and
tenant improvement specification necessary to effectuate the best terms. In addition, Gola’s
project team managed the tenant improvement project in their current space.
Unitrin is one of the nation’s leading financial services providers. The Unitrin family of
companies specializes in property and casualty insurance, life and health insurance, and
consumer finance for individuals, families, and small businesses.

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL: In 2010, Unitrin Direct teamed once again with Mark Gola of Gola
Corporate Real Estate to identify office space options for two locations (Plymouth Meeting, PA
& Chattanooga, TN). In both instances, we received exceptional feedback and guidance while
searching for the right leasing solutions for our company. Most importantly, Mark and his team
helped Unitrin Direct realize expense savings for each location.

Tim Cox, Director, Sales & Customer Service

For more information, please contact:
Mark Gola, ATR Philadelphia

 

Monday
Aug082011

PRESS RELEASE

AUGUST 2011

Acetylon Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Leases 10,000 RSF at Seaport Center, Boston, MA

Acetylon Pharmaceuticals, Inc. has leased 10,000 rentable square feet of lab and office space at Seaport Center, Boston, MA (www.seaportcenterboston.com), from The Beal Cos. and Rockpoint Group.  The space is a build to suit from gutted shell and has biology and chemistry labs, two BL-2 tissue culture labs, and office.

 Keith Coulter, President of McPherson Corporation/ATR Boston, represented Acetylon in the transaction.  Jones Lang Lasalle represented the landlord, and Steve Faber of Beal worked on behalf of the ownership.  Acetylon chose the site due to extremely attractive pricing, which was approximately 35-40% discount to Cambridge pricing for comparable space; a firm commitment to timing for delivery of the space by Beal as well as a demonstrated desire to win Acetylon’s tenancy and kick off biotech use in the building; and attractiveness of the location in recruiting and growing the company in a thriving and developing area of the city, as well as proximity to current research partners at Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School.  The lease announcement follows on the heels of the Vertex Pharmaceuticals lease of 1.1 million square feet at Marina Park, the largest lease ever for the Boston market, and for a biotech use.

 Acetylon Pharmaceuticals Inc. (www.acetylon.com)is developing next-generation selective small molecule histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors and other targeted drugs for the treatment of cancers as well as inflammatory, neurodegenerative, genetic and infectious diseases.  Selective HDAC inhibitors have the potential to reduce or eliminate the substantial side effects observed with current non-selective approaches while also realizing their extraordinary potential for enhanced therapeutic benefit through higher dosing, extended administration and reduction of combination drug toxicity. Selective HDAC inhibitors also have potential for improved therapeutic benefit in autoimmune and other inflammatory disorders, neurodegenerative diseases and certain genetic and infectious diseases.  Acetylon has raised over $40 million from public grants and investors, including New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft.

 McPherson Corporation (www.mcphersoncorp.com) has represented tenants and buyers exclusively for over 30 years, and is a founding member of the Alliance of Tenant Representatives (ATR – www.alltenrep.com); Mr. Coulter serves on the Board of Directors for ATR.

Saturday
Apr162011

PRESS RELEASE

APRIL 2011

 

New Objective, Inc. Renews 8,963 RSF at 2 Constitution Way, Woburn, MA

 

New Objective, Inc. has renewed their lease of 8,963 rentable square feet of lab and office space at 2 Constitution Way, Woburn, MA, from RW Murray Co.

 

Keith Coulter, President of McPherson Corporation/ATR Boston, represented New Objective in the transaction. Rich Green, Leasing Director of RW Murray Co. represented the landlord.

 

New Objective, Inc., is a Woburn MA based manufacturer of micro-scale sample preparation and delivery tools for the dynamic life science fields of liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry.

 

McPherson Corporation has represented tenants and buyers exclusively for over 30 years, and is a founding member of the Alliance of Tenant Representatives (ATR). Mr. Coulter serves on the Board of Directors for ATR.

Saturday
Apr162011

 PRESS RELEASE

APRIL 2011

 

 

AbPro Labs, Inc. Leases 13,500 RSF at 101 Hartwell Avenue, Lexington, MA

 

AbPro Labs, Inc. has leased 13,500 rentable square feet of lab and office space at 101 Hartwell Avenue, Lexington, MA, from King Street Properties. The building was recently purchased from AMB Property Corporation, gut renovated and converted to lab space. The space is a build to suit from shell and has biology labs, vivarium space, and office.

 

Keith Coulter, President of McPherson Corporation/ATR Boston, represented AbPro in the transaction. Steve Lynch, Partner of King Street Properties represented the landlord. AbPro chose the site due to attractive pricing, a firm commitment to timing for delivery of the space by King Street, which included full support of the Town of Lexington at an early stage in negotiations regarding permitting and use, and the attractiveness of the location in recruiting and growing the company.

 

Abpro is a biotechnology firm moving from Cambridge, MA. The Company has streamlined all the major steps to produce recombinant proteins and antibodies in a faster and more affordable format, while retaining superior quality. They have significant capabilities for generating custom hybridomas. This is complemented by high-throughput protein expression platform which can produce recombinant proteins quickly with high quality. Abpro currently sells to leading life sciences researchers worldwide.

 

McPherson Corporation has represented tenants and buyers exclusively for over 30 years, and is a founding member of the Alliance of Tenant Representatives (ATR); Mr. Coulter serves on the Board of Directors for ATR.