Tenants Seek Workplace Hospitality, Amenities

SEATTLE—Private equity real estate investment firm, Unico Properties LLC, a subsidiary of Unico Investment Group LLC, has appointed tenant tech provider Equiem to launch its app across three West Coast properties with nearly 2 million square feet. Equiem will roll out at Unico’s 1111 Third Ave., a recently repositioned 30-story tower in Seattle’s CBD; the Logan Building, a 10-story office building in downtown and the 42-story US Bancorp Tower, Portland’s largest office building at more than 1.2 million square feet of class-A office space, GlobeSt.com learns in this exclusive.

The sites are Equiem’s first on the West Coast and increase the firm’s US presence to 8.4 million square feet since expanding here in 2017. Unico has cited Equiem’s experience in global tenant experience technology and services as one of the primary reasons for the firm’s appointment.

“With office expectations changing rapidly across the country and tenants now seeking better workplace hospitality, amenities and convenience, we’re in a hugely exciting position to help landlords across the USA seamlessly transition from owners to service providers,” Gabrielle McMillan, CEO of Equiem, tells GlobeSt.com.

Equiem’s technology is used by more than 145,000 people occupying 60 million square feet of commercial real estate worldwide. The latest iteration of the firm’s app, Equiem NEXT, was launched in August and will be rolled out across all three Unico assets to help the firm attract and retain occupiers; deliver seamless tenant communication; boost onsite retail, services and experiences; and unlock additional asset value. Unico will also have access to Equiem’s comprehensive dashboards which offer tenant analytics that provide intelligence to help inform asset management plans across the three buildings.

“Throughout the competitive pitch process, Equiem stood out as the tenant experience technology provider that would best help us differentiate the Unico brand,” Darrin Williams, vice president, real estate services at Unico, tells GlobeSt.com. “The sophistication and depth of their enterprise-grade app, coupled with their proven experience in successfully scaling to new markets, gave us the confidence we needed in a partner as we design and deliver a range of new initiatives for our tenants. Unico’s customer-obsessed service that puts people first, combined with Equiem’s solutions, allow us to continue creating vibrant, engaging and connected communities across our assets, a vital point of difference in today’s leasing market.”

Founded in 2011, Equiem’s enterprise-grade end-to-end platform serves more than 8,900 companies registered across the US, Australia, the UK and Ireland. The firm recently announced the completion of its largest ever capital raise, securing more than $8.4 million from a number of different investors. Equiem says the capital will be used to continue reinvesting in its technology and keep raising the bar in the tenant experience technology space.

Developers continue to position themselves in both Seattle and on the Eastside to ready for more tech expansion, according to a report by Kidder Mathews. In downtown Bellevue, there are at least five new office projects that could break ground by early 2020, with two new office projects having commenced during the second quarter. Seattle has nine major office projects under construction on the heels of delivering nearly 1.9 million square feet of new office inventory during the second quarter. Regionally, there are 14 major office projects currently under construction totaling 4.7 million square feet with 69% of this space being pre-committed. There are an additional eight or more planned spec projects expected to become available by early 2020, but aside from Binary Towers (Amazon), no pre-leasing has been announced, says the Kidder report.