We had the pleasure of touring CultureMap's Houston office space, located on Wood Street in East Downtown. Given CultureMap's hip and trendy vibe, our expectations were high and the offices did not disappoint. With hardwood floors and the sun shining through the windows, the space has a happy, warm tone. The main area of the space includes a spacious open room for the writers to work and a large kitchen, where almost any meal could be prepared. In the back is the living room type set up with great artwork and great looking (and very comfortable!) furniture. We finished off the tour in CultureMap CEO Stephen Newman's office and saw why CultureMap is inspired by great design.
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Ridding an office of row upon row of cubicles - it's a challenge facing most business owners who have an aversion to traditional Houston office space.
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Office spaces have evolved tremendously since the days of whitewashed corporate offices with a cubicle for every employee. When some managers felt they needed to encourage teamwork in the workplace, many tore down cubicle barriers, while a largely employee-led desire to operate on more flexible schedules transformed coffee shops and homes all across the country into remote offices.
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Just as an urban-dwelling bachelor living by himself does not need a seven-seat minivan to accommodate his transportation needs (it's hardly a glamorous ride anyway), a recently launched startup with a bare-bones staff is unlikely to need a sprawling Houston office space with room for 40 employees.
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The costs of starting a new business fall into two primary categories - one-time launch-related commitments (office equipment, consulting services) and ongoing expenses (office space lease payments, salaries, insurance). With cash flow a constant concern for Houston businesses, one strategy for boosting their financial capital is shifting up-front launch expenses to monthly costs, which is why some businesses may opt to lease office equipment or enter a short term lease with one of the many Houston executive suites.
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This week we show you the studio of m Architects. We'll let them take it from here:
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Think companies based in retail space for lease in a shopping center are always relying heavily on walk-in traffic? Think again. 2nd MD, a web based health care service that allows users to have face to face video consultations with medical specialists, is currently located in the shopping center at 2538 Briar Ridge Drive, Houston TX 77057 just west of the Galleria.
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We're excited to show you the offices of Chaione, Houston's premier mobile app development shop and active contributor to the local start up scene. Located in the 4900 Woodway Building, this 5000 plus square foot office space has some of the best views of downtown and the Galleria the city has to offer.
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This week we show you the Jacksonville headquarters of Hashrocket, some of the developers behind TheSquareFoot and many other awesome Ruby On Rails websites. Known as one of the premier development firms of its kind nationally, Hashrocket's Jacksonville, Florida office sits right on the beach (in Jacksonville Beach) and has a ton of natural light and wide open spaces. This is a great example of an office space fitting the company and its ethos perfectly.
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Space is very valuable to a business and every square foot of space can be utilized in some way. Sometimes, when moving into a new office, you realize that some of your items fail to fit in your preconceived layout, or maybe you are starting to realize that your inventory and equipment takes more space in your office. One of your options could be to cram everything in your office space, possibly causing a cluttered mess. Another possible option is to find storage. With those two options open to you, when does it make more sense to rent a storage unit instead of leasing more commercial space?
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This week we feature the offices of Frankel Building Group, an award winning Houston custom home builder. Located in the heart of Tanglewood, this family business is run by President Jim Frankel and his two sons Kevin and Scott. Considering their reputation for building exquisite custom homes, we expected their headquarters to be pretty impressive and it certainly didn't disappoint.
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Dallas has all the pieces necessary to be a breeding ground for small businesses, assuming that local companies can find a way to hire locally.
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Another report on the commercial real estate picture in the United States points to the continuing demand for new office and warehouse spaces driving up office leasing activity in key markets around the country.
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When real estate developer Kevin Williamson arrived in Austin 14 years ago, the West Sixth Street district was not much to write home about - a deli and a steakhouse were the main attractions. They were, at least, until Williamson helped pioneer the expansion of several businesses that have transformed the area into a vibrant destination spot, which has positively effected Austin office space.
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This week we are featuring the offices of SnapStream TV Search, a television monitoring solution that lets you search, clip and save everything you can possibly record on TV. Jon Stewart from The Daily Show uses them to track news throughout the day and find clips for their shows. You can imagine without this technology how burdensome that process would be!
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As if it needed any more validation after getting voted as the 2011 2nd best-selling mater planned community in the United States, The Woodlands keeps getting good news on the commercial side as well. Anadarko recently announced plans to add a second office tower next to its headquarters on Woodlands Parkway. The new tower will hold 550,000 square feet of class A office space and will rise 21 floors above the 10 story parking garage it will sit on. We can certainly assume that the new tower will be constructed using state-of-the-art energy efficiency practices LEED certified. Based on the rendering, it looks like it will be gorgeous.
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This week we're featuring a really unique space in the Houston Montrose area, where RedHouse Associates makes it home. Literally a red house, this Houston city landmark has been completely renovated on the inside and serves as the base to Houston's premier startup Incubator - which provides strategic advice and services to assist young companies in developing business plans, devising product strategies, growing sales organizations, and preparing senior management teams for raising capital and strategic exits.
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This week we are featuring the offices of a young Houston startup company, SupportChoice, Inc. Located on North Post Oak Rd. near Uptown Park, SupportChoice Founder and CEO Taylor Pipkin and his staff provide on-demand computer support via remote desktop control technology. Offering a host of services, SupportChoice is a great resource for those in need of technical support with the click of a button.
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When visiting with small business owners about how their company’s office space plays a role in the business growth and culture, there’s typically a common theme that rears it’s ugly head: too many mistakes are made in the leasing process. Owners and decision makers often make several key mistakes that can end up costing companies significantly down the line and can even cripple their growth rate. Because office rent is the second highest expense the vast majority of companies incur, doing things the wrong way leading up to signing on the dotted line can be devastating and can make any business owner go crazy!
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Reading through Zag.com and TrueCar’s models, it struck us that car buying and commercial leasing is not all that different. We've already been explaining to people how the search for a commercial lease was changing in the same fashion that the car buying experience did about five to eight years ago. Back then, the average automobile consumer would drive to multiple dealerships, talk to salesmen, talk to their friends, and maybe buy a Kelly Blue Book or Edmunds magazine.The consumer was trying to get educated prior to making a major purchase. Today, the same consumer gets online, learns the process, the sales tricks, the best time to buy, and scans the available options. They arrive at the dealership with a graduate-level education compared to the old way of buying a car. The similarities don’t stop there. When you buy a car, the dealer has an end price in mind and tries to confuse the bottom line by lowering the sticker price, tweaking the down payment, adjusting the interest rate, or a multitude of other variables.
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Last week I attended a networking event at NYU poly labs hosted by CBS alumni who office there. I had a chance to catch up with our buddy Ben Zhuk of BestVendor. Trying to fish for some business, I asked him what happens when people outgrow their space there. He said most try to take over a lease of a startup who is in a space that has grown too small for them as they themselves need to expand. I told him those are great if you can find them, but they aren’t abundant in most markets.
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This week we are featuring the Houston downtown office space of integratePR, a local public relations and social media firm located on Vine Street in EaDo Houston. TheSquareFoot had the pleasure of visiting integratePR's offices, located in a refurbished industrial-style complex with a historical look and feel. The building, named Vine Street Studios, was originally the Union Transfer and Storage Building built in 1917 and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places by the United States Department of the Interior. There is a total of 57,500 square feet of net rentable office/studio space, plus 25,000 square feet of rentable basement space, for a total of 82,500 square feet. Allie Herzog, Founder and President of integratePR was nice enough to give us a tour of her second story downtown Houston office which has an open concept, exposed air conditioning and lighting ducts, and is encased in red brick.[gallery link="file"]
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How's this for a traditional bank? Frost Bank opened state-of-the-art branch in Rice Village, which made for another of the more interesting new Houston commercial properties. Here's the kicker, it's not just a place for banking transactions, but can serve as an alternate location for businesses, organizations, and boards to hold special events and meetings. This kind of complex shows how cutting edge properties can diversify and get the most use out of a single location.
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We had been anxiously waiting to go visit 8th Wonder Brewery; especially after all the press they had been receiving from Swamplot and CultureMap in Houston lately. We met one of the Co-Founders, Ryan Soroka at their newly leased location in downtown Houston (specifically Eado). You could see the excitement brewing (sorry couldn’t help it…) as he unlocked the door and rolled up the metal bay doors to his soon to be converted industrial space in Houston.
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In our attempt to show the world all of the different office leasing options in Houston, we came across another great concept that's perfect for entrepreneurs, start-ups, or anyone looking for their own desk or Houston coworking spaceaway from home.
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In this blog post on Globe St, Tony LoPinto (their recruiting expert) discusses recent decisions by Google and Twitter to locate their employees in city locations. He notes that this a new trend, different from days past where technology companies choose offices in suburban locations. Google's purchase of 111 Eight Ave at the end of last year was the largest purchase of commercial real estate by a tenant in US history. Sorry Chevron.
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A few months back, I wrote about the current executive office search options in Houston. I thought it was time to give one of them a try.
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After reading this except from a recent BestVendor Blog post, I thought about the short term lease options in Houston -
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