Latest news with #officeexpansion
BBC News
23-06-2025
- Business
- BBC News
Four-storey extension to Wolverhampton warehouse approved
Plans have been approved for a four-storey extension to a warehouse, including more office space and kitchen proposed addition from food business Middleton Group had an acceptable design and was in keeping with the "character and appearance of the existing building", City of Wolverhampton Council scale of the extension for a site off Willenhall Road was found to be "a sufficient distance away" from the nearest homes, and "that there would be no unacceptable impact upon residential amenity".The council said it had worked to secure a development that would improve the "economic, social and environmental conditions of the area". It granted permission subject to commercial vehicle movements to and from the site during construction being restricted to hours between 07:00 and 18:00 from Monday to Friday, and 08:00 to 13:00 on Saturdays, with no activity on Sundays or bank and public holidays. Follow BBC Wolverhampton & Black Country on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
Yahoo
15-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Amazon Signs 141,000 Square Foot We Work Lease In Silicon Valley Amid Relentless Expansion And Back To Work Mandate
Benzinga and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below. Amazon's (NASDAQ:AMZN) office expansion knows no bounds. Fresh from expanding its presence in New York, the tech giant announced it is growing its presence in Silicon Valley by teaming up with WeWork (NYSE:WE) to add 141,000 square feet of office space to accommodate its return-to-office mandate, CoStar News reports. The new offices are located at 4980 Great America Parkway in Santa Clara, California, in a building that Amazon will occupy in its entirety as part of its effort to have its workforce return to a five-day-per-week in-office work schedule. 'We're constantly evaluating our office footprint based on the needs of Amazon's businesses,' an Amazon spokesperson told CoStar News. Don't Miss: Maker of the $60,000 foldable home has 3 factory buildings, 600+ houses built, and big plans to solve housing — Peter Thiel turned $1,700 into $5 billion—now accredited investors are eyeing this software company with similar breakout potential. Learn how you can WeWork has been a constant collaborator with Amazon, and the most recent deal follows similar arrangements the two companies have made recently, CosStar reports. At 330 W. 34th St. in New York and at 401 San Antonio Road in Mountain View, California, WeWork signed an office lease before Amazon moved in. 'So if we look at it and just take today's environment with all the uncertainty around tariffs and what's happening, who's prepared to commit to a 10- or a 15-year lease with $50 or $100 million spend?' WeWork CEO, John Santora, said of the arrangement with Amazon and other companies at a recent summit. 'You have to think about it. You have to think whether or not to invest that major capital in a market, at least through this short term. You have to step back,' he told Bloomberg. Trending: Invest Where It Hurts — And Help Millions Heal: While back-to-work mandates have been popular amongst many major corporations this year, Amazon has struggled to implement their's due to a lack of office space. Workers in Dallas, Phoenix, Atlanta and New York had their deadlines to return to the office pushed back four months while Amazon acquired more space. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told employees in September that returning to an in-office work regimen was vital because 'collaborating, brainstorming and inventing are simpler and more effective.' 'If it's not for you, then that's OK. You can go and find another company if you want to. But for us, that's what we've decided is the best way to operate our company,' Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman said at a Wall Street Journal event in return-to-office push has not been without its complications, with parking space and commuting being among the complaints from former remote workers, the Journal reported. 'While we've heard ideas for improvement from a relatively small number of employees and are working to address those, these anecdotes don't reflect the sentiment we're hearing from most of our teammates,' a company spokeswoman told the Journal in February. 'What we're seeing is great energy across our offices.' On June 9 Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro announced that Amazon planned to invest 'at least $20 billion to establish multiple high-tech cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI) innovation campuses across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.' The push would create 'at least 1,250 high-paying, high-tech jobs. Salem Township and Falls Township are the first communities identified as sites for these future campuses,' he said in a statement. It marks the largest capital investment in the commonwealth's history. Read Next: With Point, you can Deloitte's fastest-growing software company partners with Amazon, Walmart & Target – Image: Shutterstock This article Amazon Signs 141,000 Square Foot We Work Lease In Silicon Valley Amid Relentless Expansion And Back To Work Mandate originally appeared on Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
08-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Despite slump for downtown St. Paul, some companies find new space to grow
After little more than a year sub-leasing offices on Wabasha Street in downtown St. Paul, FreezPak Logistics needed space to expand its national transportation sales and marketing hub. The New Jersey-based cold storage and food delivery company recently signed a long-term lease at Infor Commons, a 13-story office building on St. Peter Street, for 6,500 square feet near the top level. With buildout near completion, the company's workspace will soon nearly triple. 'We thought originally we were going to put it in New Jersey,' said Mo Shearer, FreezPak's senior vice president of transportation. 'As we continued to recruit and people applied, we saw more and more applicants from the Twin Cities. Rather than ask them to uproot their families to the East Coast, I moved here from Maryland.' At the same time, the Jacobson Law Group was looking to relocate its 16 attorneys from the Great Northern Building on Fifth Street in Lowertown but stay in St. Paul. By the end of June, they'll fill 7,400 square feet at Infor Commons, once known as Lawson Commons. Between them, the two companies are sliding in like Tetris pieces to spaces that had been given up in 2023 by Travelers Insurance, which still occupies multiple floors within the office tower that has finally begun to build back tenancies in the post-pandemic era. No, Infor Commons isn't back above 90% occupancy, the kind of numbers it enjoyed before remote work went into full swing in 2020. Still, 'we stabilized and are now growing,' said Jerry Hersman, vice president with Frauenshuh Property Management, who recently renewed a five-year lease with one of his building's most long-standing tenants, Kincaid's Fish, Chop and Steakhouse. Some may see commercial tenants relocating within downtown St. Paul as 'kind of shifting the deck chairs around the Titanic a little bit,' acknowledged Hersman. Nevertheless, as state government and other employers require more workers to return to job sites in person at least part time, there will be winners and losers downtown, with more reshuffling to come. While the implosion of Madison Equities, downtown St. Paul's largest property owner, and the exodus of foot traffic in the era of remote work have indeed cast dark clouds over many of the city's most iconic buildings, property managers still hope to gain from the consolidation of restaurant, retail and office tenants in key properties, as well as some new arrivals, even as nearby properties decline. The city of St. Paul has launched a 'space use study' that seeks to determine if many of its downtown offices could be consolidated on the ninth floor of the Osborn 370 building on Wabasha Street, which has offered the city an eight-year lease, with the first year being rent-free. Based on the study's findings, the city could reconfigure existing office space within the City Hall Annex building across the street from City Hall on Fourth Street, or empty the annex building out completely, which could position it for conversion to residences. At the Great Northern Building, skyways had grown eerily silent and security and maintenance had become 'virtually non-existent,' said Jacobson shareholder Joseph Halloran. No one from property management at the Great Northern made an effort to get the firm to stick around at the end of their 10-year lease, he said. 'We were ready to grow this space a while ago, but we weren't going to do it until we saw an improvement in the environment or the management of the building. That didn't happen,' said Halloran, who is looking forward to better days ahead at Infor Commons, which sits closer to Rice Park. For some industry observers, lateral movement to new locations within the same downtown carries at least a hint of promise. After all, empty offices and retail also mean there's plenty of room for growth. 'Having one full building and one empty building is a lot better than two half-empty buildings,' said Joe Spencer, president and chief executive officer of the St. Paul Downtown Alliance, a partnership between City Hall and major downtown employers. 'That allows the vacant building to transition to housing or other new uses.' Sherman Associates' recent conversion of the 25-story Landmark Towers office building on St. Peter Street into luxury housing has already paid off for properties like Infor Commons, which had a tough go of it coming out of the pandemic. 'After right-sizing post-COVID, we dropped down to 70% occupancy, which is our bottom,' Hersman said. Then, about three years ago, Morgan Stanley wealth management and the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce exited Landmark Towers, which is now fully residential, and landed at Infor Commons, filling 24,000 square feet between them. In late May, Hersman was happy to share that he had three more lease renewals under negotiation, as well as a handful of potential new leases in the works. That's a positive trend in a downtown where a third of office space sits vacant, and as much as 40% of downtown's competitive office market has been listed for sale, according to the Greater St. Paul Building Owners and Managers Association. 'We're committed to staying here in downtown St. Paul,' said FreezPak's Shearer. 'We're in a longer lease. I'm coming from the East Coast, and I was pleasantly surprised how much there was to offer in the Twin Cities.' Your Money: What octogenarians want you to know Working Strategies: Using AI while maintaining core skills 3 surprising market winners in 2025 St. Paul Corner Drug closing historic soda fountain Longtime Grand Avenue fabric shop Treadle Yard Goods has closed amid owner's cancer battle Some skyway businesses quickly landed in neighboring buildings after Madison Equities stopped paying utilities at the Alliance Bank Center and the property was condemned by the city. Their experiences have been mixed. Bilal Saleem, better known as Mr. B, was one of the last tenants to leave the Alliance Bank Center and one of the first to open up shop in a glassy, brightly-lit space between the Town Square food court and the skyway entrance to the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel, just above the Minnesota Department of Motor Vehicles. As DMV customers come upstairs for a snack, they happen upon his barbershop, which has been a boon for business. He's planning a grand opening celebration with food and service discounts from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on June 13. 'I'm happy here. I love it,' said Saleem, who has worked out of at least four locations downtown across some 20 years. 'It's a step above the rest. It's a stress-free environment.' Bob Wolf, of Greenwolf Hemp and Organics, and Paul Hartquist Jeweler also landed at Town Square, next to the shuttered skyway entrance to the condemned Alliance Bank Center. Without the building-to-building foot traffic, Wolf noted he's basically at the end of a dead-end street, which has hurt his business. Hoping to boost his store's visibility, he hosted a musician for a Jimmy Buffett-style skyway celebration on May 29 and offered free samples of his wares. 'Let people walk through,' said Wolf. 'Open up the skyway!' Even before the death of Madison Equities principal Jim Crockarell last year, major employers like Cray supercomputers, TKDA engineering and Wold Architects had left St. Paul for Bloomington or Minneapolis. Madison Equities has put most of its commercial properties downtown up for sale, and has already lost some buildings to foreclosure. As those buildings empty, there could be at least a small silver lining for some properties around them. 'Obviously, the 1.3 million-square-foot Crockarell portfolio looms large,' said Rhett Carlson, a development associate with Sherman Associates. 'If all that was taken offline tomorrow, then yes, that'd zap downtown vacancy and be a boon to the (higher-end) Class A towers.' He noted, however, that businesses leaving downtown buildings have plenty of options to choose from outside the city, including and beyond Minneapolis, and in the digital era, even outside of physical space. 'The 'flight to quality' is the cliche thrown around,' said Carlson, who puts more faith in office-to-residential conversions like Landmark Towers. 'The struggle of having a two-'Central Business District' metro seems more evident than ever. And law offices don't have to have physical files in any city.' It's clear to commercial brokers and property managers that there are some tough times ahead for downtown. The biggest wild card in some property managers' eyes? The state of Minnesota. Gov. Tim Walz called thousands of state employees back to the office at least half time as of June 1, though ongoing pushback from employee unions has led the governor to offer exceptions to those workers who live more than 50 miles away. St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter called city government workers back to the office three times per week as of April 1. Given office consolidations, the return of upwards of 20,000 state employees, which is still opposed by some labor unions, will not be a major benefit for every property the state once occupied. For instance, leases for the state Department of Health expired last year at the Golden Rule Building on Seventh Place, emptying two floors. Rather than relocate within downtown proper, the offices consolidated in state-owned space within the Freeman Building, which sits inside the Capitol campus on Robert Street, outside of downtown. As far as state workers returning, 'it's kind of a wild card in that we don't really know how all of that is going to shake out yet,' said Tina Gassman, president of the Greater St. Paul Building Owners and Managers Association. 'It can be a boon, but if tenants are moving out of downtown leased space, that helps less so than we would hope.' Still, some state employees will indeed return to the downtown core. Since 2021, the state has leased approximately 207,000 square feet in the Great Northern Building on Fifth Street, which houses the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, among other state offices. The St. Paul Port Authority, which owns and operates Treasure Island Center, is looking forward to the return of as many as 250 state employees as Minnesota Housing calls its workers back to the office. Minnesota Hockey, the statewide governing body of amateur hockey, and the two-time PWHL champion Minnesota Frost have also moved into the building. Commerce is already filling in around them. Afro Deli, which sits across the street, plans to relocate this summer to the Treasure Island Center food counter previously occupied by Slice Pizza, occupying the empty space near Walgreens and the Pillbox Tavern. 'There is a lot of great activity happening at the Treasure Island Center,' said Ashley Aram, a Port Authority spokesperson. The return of more state workers can't come soon enough for some downtown business owners. Fed up after examining surveillance video and finding a drug user had repeatedly broken into the Railroader Printing building's private bathroom, public relations executive Joe Thornton and other employees of Aimclear digital marketing considered a few months ago whether it was time to relocate to the suburbs or go fully remote. Their perch above the Bulldog restaurant and Mears Park had been good to them over the years. Still, Madison Equities' vacant Park Square Court building — which adjoins the Railroader Printing building — has fallen into neglect and disrepair, with visible evidence of squatters defecating in a corner. Then came January. That's when St. Paul's Downtown Improvement District expanded into Lowertown, bringing with it street safety and cleaning ambassadors available with a call to a pager to walk workers to their cars or remove blankets, shoes and other detritus abandoned in the skyway. St. Paul police identified the repeat drug user who had broken into the bathroom and convinced him to move along. Even the Green Line light-rail station near the Union Depot, long a magnet for litter and loitering, has gotten cleaner, as has Mears Park, Thornton said. Quarterly meetings between downtown businesses and representatives of the mayor's office have sometimes been tense, but they've also led to introductions to the court-appointed receiver now overseeing the Park Square Court building, which has been reassuring, Thornton said. With those and other improvements in mind, Aimclear made the decision to stay in Lowertown. Thornton noted downtowns everywhere have been impacted by remote work, the housing crisis, the fentanyl crisis and other pressures. 'We have an almost identical office up in Duluth, and we've had many of the same problems,' he said. 'We could easily move both offices or go full remote, but … we're here. We're going to be sitting above Bulldog for as long as we can see into the foreseeable future.' St. Paul Central students design a mascot to represent everyone In downtown St. Paul, minus a cafe, Landmark Center is 100% leased St. Paul Corner Drug closing historic soda fountain Officers in Minneapolis raid wore distinct patches. One was authorized, another wasn't, feds say. Longtime Grand Avenue fabric shop Treadle Yard Goods has closed amid owner's cancer battle
Associated Press
17-05-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
BASE Global Solutions Expands in the Philippines With Productive, Flexible Workspaces
05/16/2025, Surfers Paradise Australia // KISS PR Brand Story PressWire // As outsourcing continues to shape the future of work, BASE Global Solutions is leading the charge by opening new, flexible office spaces in the Philippines—giving team members the freedom to choose where and how they work. This expansion marks a first for BASE Global, enabling Filipino team members to drop in and out of office facilities designed for productivity, collaboration, and career growth. Specialising in connecting Australian accounting and financial planning businesses with outsourced accountants, outsourced bookkeepers, and outsourced financial planning staff using highly skilled talent in the Philippines, BASE Global Solutions is quickly becoming the outsourcing partner of choice for growth-focused businesses. 'A first for our clients is the ability for Philippines-based team members to drop in and out of our new facilities, enabling them to choose and work the best of both worlds,' said Wyatt Bacon BASE Global COO Outsourcing is no longer a backup plan—it's a strategic pathway for companies serious about scale. BASE combines top-tier recruitment with people-first infrastructure, prioritising team security, community, and long-term career opportunities. The new office environments are not just about desks and internet access—they're designed to foster a sense of belonging and autonomy. 'BASE prioritises staff security, access to the best career opportunities, and feeling part of a team. Our office spaces, where our team can drop in and out, really drive these,' Wyatt With flexible work environments emerging as a key factor in attracting and retaining high-calibre professionals, BASE's move is both timely and forward-thinking. Sourcing insights from ongoing recruitment data confirmed that top-tier talent values choice and agency—qualities embedded into the design of the new facilities. 'The right to choose how you work is often overlooked. BASE offices give our team the autonomy to choose between home and office, so they can be the most productive.' By pairing this flexibility with world-class Australian clients and high-growth career opportunities, BASE has cemented its place as a leading BPO for businesses across Australia. Whether clients are seeking cost-effective staffing, expanded operational capacity, or greater output without increased overhead, BASE delivers results. To learn more about how BASE Global Solutions connects world-class talent with future-focused businesses, visit About BASE Global Solutions BASE Global Solutions helps Australian accountants, bookkeepers, and financial services firms scale sustainably by providing access to qualified, Philippines-based professionals. With a focus on flexibility, team empowerment, and operational excellence, BASE supports both clients and staff with a modern, people-first approach to outsourcing. ### Media Contact Wyatt Bacon COO BASE Global Solutions newsroom: Source published by Submit Press Release >> BASE Global Solutions Expands in the Philippines With Productive, Flexible Workspaces
