Devon expanding downtown

[goodguy]

Did anyone see this in business section of the Sunday Oklahoman? They are going to lease 100,000 square feet in the Corporate Tower. This is good news for Downtown. 100,000 square feet of class A office space off the market.

[Patrick]

I'd love to see them build a new tower downtown and try to consolidate all of their offices. Now they'll be spread out among 3 buildings.

[workman45]

This is great news. What change does this make in the percentage of available class A space downtown?

[venture]

Though any town would love to see a change to the skyline, getting open space off the market is far more important than flooding it with more.

[ibda12u]

I'd love to see them build a new tower downtown and try to consolidate all of their offices. Now they'll be spread out among 3 buildings.

Technically they already are spread out into 3 buildings downtown.
First National Center, Chase Tower, and the Devon Tower. There is a surplus storage at a 4th building, but I guess that doesn't really count.

Devon has leased space on a temporary basis before at Corporate Tower, when they were remodeling some IT floors. I think they'd leased it for about 6months then moved the IT folks back down.

[BDP]

Though any town would love to see a change to the skyline, getting open space off the market is far more important than flooding it with more.

I agree. Build it once we need it, not before. I think the real problem is the continued building of office space outside of downtown. I know it doesn't make sense for all companies to be downtown, but it does keep vacancy up and prices down, which lowers the motivation for projects like renovating the First National bulding.

[Patrick]

True. I think as the vacancy rate declines downtown, you'll again see a need for building skyscrapers downtown.

BTW, I'd love to see Devon fill more of First National.

[shane453]

I couldn't find the article.

[Patrick]

Here's the article:

http://newsok.com/article/1784100/


Devon Energy fills new space downtown

By Adam Wilmoth
The Oklahoman

Steve Nelson and the 1,200 other Oklahoma City employees at Devon Energy Corp. soon will have more breathing room.


Rapid expansion in recent years has caused the state’s largest publicly traded company to outgrow its digs, forcing some new employees to find office space where available, even if it is away from other team members.

Devon executives said Friday they expect relief this summer when the company expands into five floors of the Corporate Tower. The building is about a block west of Mid-America Tower, which sports the Devon logo.

“With us being able to make this move and have room to seat team members together, it is going to improve our communication,” said Nelson, operations manager for Devon’s western division. “That’s going to help us move more quickly and work more like a team.”

Devon uses about 500,000 square feet of downtown Oklahoma City office space, occupying 15 floors in its Mid-America Towe, 15 floors of the Chase Building next door and two floors at the First National Center. The new lease in Corporate Tower will give the company an additional 100,000 square feet of office space.

Crews are expected to start remodeling the new space no later than next week. Nelson and the more than 200 employees of Devon’s western division are likely to move to the offices in July.

The western division was chosen for the space largely because of its size, said Marian Moon, Devon’s senior vice president of administration.

“We looked at the functions and the space available and tried to make that judgment based on the best fit of the group and how much additional room was needed,” she said. “We consulted with the operating divisions located here to determine what would work best. We think it is very important to keep division personnel intact and not split them up.”

While Devon continues to hire more employees rapidly, Moon said the company is not likely to need more office space for at least a few years.

“We have tried to plan this expansion in a way that would give us adequate growing room at least for the next two or three years,” she said. “We think this will take care of us for the foreseeable future.”

Besides providing a benefit to Devon and its cramped employees, the company’s expansion also helps the downtown Oklahoma City commercial real estate market, said Charles Wiggin, president and chief executive of Oklahoma City-based Wiggin Properties.

“This is very big news for that building and for all of downtown,” Wiggin said. “Downtown buildings do have some vacancies left in them, but every time there’s a big piece of it taken like this, it reduces the number of options and tightens the market. This is an indication that the downtown market is healthier than it has been for a number of years.”
Devon’s move essentially fills to capacity the nearly 278,000-square-foot Corporate Tower. The corporate expansion also reduces the central business district’s total class A and B vacant office space to just more than 600,000 square feet, which is about 17 percent of the total 3.47 million square feet in the district.