Three proposals already are in prospective tenants' hands for part of the Atlanta building, which is rising in Gwinnett County, and inquiries have been fielded for the planned addition to Westway Park in Houston, says Jake Ragusa, KDC's senior vice president, who led the charge to develop the Intellicenter pilot program. The North Texas building, like many of the others, will rise as pure spec when crews dig into the Regent Center tract in Irving.
Ragusa has spent the past year getting input from Fortune 500 companies and leading tenant reps nationwide to come up with a three-story building design, with 14-inch raised floors for cabling and HVAC, to meet LEED certification and corporate America's expectations for office set-ups exceeding 25,000 sf. Buildings range from 150,000 sf to 200,000 sf; each will cost $20 million to $25 million. The prototype has a 5:1,000 sf ratio for office space as well as parking--in sync to corporations' needs to put more employees into less space to shave real estate costs without hampering production and morale. Among the design perks is a separate thermostat for each work station.
After the first 10 are built, KDC and its Newark, NJ-based equity partner will "revisit" the design and market conditions to discuss expanding the program, Steve Van Amburgh, CEO for the Dallas-based KDC, tells GlobeSt.com. But, the prototypical design and preliminary interest have generated enough confidence that second sites in nearly all 10 markets have been ID'd or locked in for a second wave of construction, he says. "We really believe the popularity of these buildings is going to be contagious," he adds.
The 2006 construction schedule calls for starts in the following order: Charlotte, NC, Riverside, CA, Phoenix, Tampa, Austin, Raleigh-Durham, NC and Northern California. And, all will be completed before next year wraps up.
The Intellicenter-branded buildings were designed by San Francisco-headquartered Gensler and the St. Louis-based Forum Studio Inc. The Intellicenter general contracting award went to Clayco, also from St. Louis, which is KDC's contractor for Fluor Corp.'s headquarters project in Irving.
As for Intellicenter leasing, Van Amburgh says that decision will be made within two weeks. Interviews are in the final rounds. And, he says, it's a relatively safe bet that one national brokerage house is going to make a slam dunk for the entire coast-to-coast contract.
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