Why Finance Companies Are Flocking to Creative Office

Encore Capital Group is the first tenant to sign a lease at Ampersand, a 340,000-square-foot creative office conversion project in the former San Diego Union-Tribune building. The Casey Brown Co. is repurposing the property into a creative office campus with ample amenities and outdoor space. While the developer wasn’t targeting a specific industry for the project, the financial company’s interest illustrates the increasing interest for highly amenitized and designed office space across industry types. Encore signed a 95,000-square-foot ground floor lease in the project.

“We all like to be able to put things in a box, but we were really trying to attract tenants that have a focus on productivity and on the health and wellness of their employees,” Casey Brown, principal of The Casey Brown Co, tells GlobeSt.com. “That is the real reason why a tenant would choose Ampersand as their home. They need to be companies that have that focus, and there are economic reasons for that. When you lose an employee, it costs money to replace them. This is a project where employees will be proud of and that guests will be in awe of.”

Encore is the first tenant in the project and will likely be the largest as well. “I’m not surprised that a tenant of 100,000 square feet leased the space,” adds Brown. “Our vision is that there will be 10 to 15 tenants in this project, and those might range from 100,000 square feet to 10,000 square feet.”