Engineering Firm Splits CBD for Suburbs

DENVER—Arcadis Geraghty & Miller, an international environmental and engineering services consultant, is moving its US headquarters from Downtown Denver to a new building in the Highlands Ranch Business Park in the Southwest suburbs. Arcadis will be the 35,000-sf anchor tenant in a new, $11-million, two-story building at 630 Plaza Dr. in Opus Plaza, developed by Opus Northwest. Currently, the company is leasing 42,000 sf on two floors at 1099 18th St., a building it has occupied since 1989, says Arcadis EVP Cathy Speak. A total of 110 employees will people the new building.

The company has been paying $15.50 per sf for its Downtown office space, and rents would have almost doubled to about $27 per foot, she says. Also, the price of parking has risen dramatically Downtown, and increasingly employees had to fight traffic congestion. ”There was a quality-of-life issue,” she says. ”One of the first things we did was to plot where all of our employees lived, and there was a real cluster of people south of I-70 and west of I-25.”

Annie Warhover, president of the Downtown Denver Partnership, an economic development group, expects other tenants concerned about rising rates to leave the CBD for the suburbs. ”Downtown has some of the most expensive rates in the area, but there are a lot of other companies willing to pay the rates to be Downtown,” she says.