It's not a secret that the company is trying to whittle things down to just one large admin building / campus per hub. The head of CPG has talked about it on town halls. If that's the case, what's the last building standing in Charlotte? CIC?
12 replies (most recent on top)
I don’t think there will be only 1 in CLT. I can confirm all uptown people will eventually be in 550. CIC & 550 are solidified. Other than that, I’d be speculating but I’d put my money on anything we own.
The people saying get rid of the leases and keep the owned seem logical. I mean, I don’t necessarily think all of the owned buildings indefinitely either but so long as they aren’t inescapably locked into the leases for a super long time it makes sense those would go first. They’re paying for the utilities and taxes either way whether directly or indirectly as part of rent, so as long as they intend to keep a certain amount of office space it makes sense to put off taking a loss on selling the owned buildings until they simply aren’t needed.
As far as specific locations, CIC definitely isn’t going anywhere so long as we have a justifiable amount of butts needing the seats, and I imagine it would be a while before they’d completely exit Uptown with how many buildings they have there now. I could definitely see the people down near the border or in SC getting f*cked on their commute at some point and needing to go all the way Uptown or even to CIC. Everything I’ve seen from leadership the past couple years with RTO and location strategy they’d hardly give it a second thought to do that if it made business sense to them.
What about N community house road?
If they cant fill it or lease it, they are losing money on the maintenance and tax on the buildings. If they can unload it for a loss now they probably will.
Not a limitation if they sell the building then, I guess. And losses don't deter them, over the last decade or so WF has routinely sold large office buildings for a fraction of what they paid for them, or what they were valuated at very recently. They don't care about losses. They didn't earn the money and they are getting their millions. They couldn't care less about losing millions on a building. They've done it many many times.
One Wells (jukebox building) was a lease. When Duke left 550 (a building that WF always owned, it made sense to move the staff from One Wells to 550 and invest in that building. Any leased buildings are on the chopping block, which makes good business sense in this CRE market.
They got rid of Wells One a while back. I sat in Wells Ones, then moved to S Brevard.
It's no secret that office space valuations have dropped like a rock, the firm is probably trying to solve two problems at once: get rid of expensive US employees and expensive depreciating real estate. You can't really sell Office space in today's market with doing substantial upgrades to the building. Otherwise you would have to sell at a deep discount essentially just for the land value.
They are not closing any of the building they actually own, CIC 550 Tryon,12301 vance, 301 and 401 uptown buildings (might lease or sell these 2) Brigham is a lease.
My sense is that the CIC will be the last site in Charlotte to close.
Engineering firms have been working on CIC.
They are investing $350MM in the CIC, so you are nuts if you think it’s closing. 8000 there now will go up to 10,000+
There will be at least 3. CiC, Brigham, 550 Tryon. Not sure how long 3WF will last.