They’re just like us! City exploiting bad economy for good deal on office space
Everyone likes a good bargain, including our local municipal government. In keeping with of the recommendations from Ernst & Young’s report on the potential new City Hall, the city is out bargain-hunting for office space. San Diego owns three buildings (Golden Hall, the City Administration Building, and the City Operations Building), but it also rents space in three other offices around town. The leases on the rentals don’t come due until 2013, but the city is soliciting offers from those landlords right now, as well as taking offers on other office spaces.
The city is hoping the bad economy will help secure a good rent. Rates for top-of-the-line buildings are down, sometimes as much as 20 percent. But the city’s current landlords have some bargaining power because the city will need to make a new space conform to their needs via renovations, plus it would have to account for moving costs. Plus, the city would need a lot of space.
“It’s been difficult to find that amount of space available in the time frame we’d need,” said a spokesperson for Mayor Jerry Sanders, Rachel Laing.
The offers from those landlords will then be passed along to Jones Lang LaSalle, the accounting firm charged with determining whether the city would save or lose money if it decides to build a new City Hall. Lower rents will not, however, eliminate the numerous problems the city has with the buildings it owns outright, which Ernst & Young says should be tolerated for no more than the next 10 years.
