Nuveen Taps Industrious To Create Tenant Network Across National Portfolio

Nuveen is expanding its partnership with flexible workspace provider Industrious to broaden its tenant offerings in an increasingly tough office leasing environment.

New York-based Industrious, which counts CBRE as a major investor, has been tapped to run the shared spaces — like lobbies, conference rooms and event areas — in all 64 of Nuveen’s office properties in 13 states, and will allow all of its tenants to access amenities and programming across the portfolio.

The idea, Industrious CEO Jamie Hodari said in an interview, is for Nuveen to create a singular, identifiable brand across its whole portfolio — a recognition that the way people are using the workplace has changed since the pandemic. This is the most ambitious landlord partnership the flexible workplace provider has attempted to date, he said.

“Before Covid, many tenants expected they would have to be fully responsible for delivering their employees' workplace experience,” Hodari said. “Now, for a lot of tenants, they would love to have the building's help.”

Industrious will develop a “tenant experience and community engagement program” that will focus on brand and hospitality standards, talent and training, engagement and communications, programming and content, and analytics, according to a release. Industrious will collect a management fee to create the program. Industrious was first tapped to manage spaces in Nuveen's 730 Third Ave. office tower in Manhattan last year.

Nuveen’s 64 buildings span some 18M SF of office space in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, the District of Columbia, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Utah, Colorado, California and Washington.

“Obviously it's no secret, office demand is tough right now,” Nuveen Director of Asset Management for Office and Life Science Brian Wallick told Bisnow. “We've spent a lot of capital on our buildings, but sometimes you need the right framework to present the kind of the capital you spent and what's been done.”

At 730 Third,, Nuveen has installed an 8K SF staffed fitness center, a 6K SF sky lounge, in-house catering and a modular conference center, as well as a Topgolf Swing Suite immersive entertainment simulator.

“We weren’t doing a good enough job of engaging with tenants,” he said. “The whole goal is to make the workplace not just feel like work, we wanted to kind of give it that hotel, hospitality-type vibe."

With this new program, tenants will be able to book spaces, rooms and attend events, creating what Nuveen hopes will be a “tenant first” culture across the portfolio.

“The whole goal of this is that you can walk into a building, and know it's a Nuveen building," Wallick said. "That's what we're trying to get to by creating an organized and consistent brand and messaging across our entire portfolio.”

Office landlords are under intensifying pressure to provide spaces that will encourage tenants to sign leases and workers to come back from remote work. Office building occupancy in New York remains less than 50%, per Kastle Systems data, with Houston and Austin the only metros in the 10 places the company tracks with occupancy over 60%.

Many landlords are expecting a greater return this year, as news of layoffs cause angst amongst workers about job security. However, hybrid work arrangements are becoming the norm for companies, and there have been several notable space reductions from major firms in lease renewals. Leasing has been sluggish too, with total volume for the fourth quarter in Manhattan down 27% below the five-year quarterly average, per CBRE.

“There is this huge shift in flight to quality and [tenants are asking] ‘What can you give me that other buildings can't that's different?’” Wallick said. “You have to be creative.”

Hodari said many landlords are “sitting on their hands” and expecting workers to go back to demanding little from their buildings. But managing a workplace experience is now more complex, he said, and it is crucial that landlords adapt the way they run their properties.

“Everyone is on a journey right now,” he said. "It's not just buildings. Tenants are trying to work through what great work looks like in the coming 20 years, and I think it doesn't behoove anyone to pretend they have all the answers."