2022's Top 10 Unique Projects and Office Designs
If real estate's post-pandemic evolution has taught us anything, it's that typical doesn't cut it anymore. The office market has experienced a dramatic flight to quality as tenants reevaluate what the physical office means for their business, choosing more thoughtfully-designed spaces that entice employees out of their homes.
Users are also flocking to projects that are unique and offer something new across other sectors as well. Adaptive reuse projects that reinvented dilapidated or underutilized buildings were the darling of LoopNet's design coverage this year. These projects include a vacant bank in Columbus, Indiana, that now houses a specialty coffee shop and preserves the Midwestern town's iconic mid-century architecture, and a distribution warehouse that became the manufacturing center and showroom for Norton Motorcycles in the U.K., to name a few.
As we reflect on 2022, LoopNet looked back at some of the best projects featured on our site over the past year, showcasing office, retail, and hospitality projects that stand out. From two redeveloped Sears department stores that offer a blueprint for how to revitalize vacant malls, to a warehouse-turned-tech office that made itself "rideable" for its skateboard-loving employees, these 10 projects are ones that any real estate professional can aspire to emulate in the year ahead.
How 2 Shuttered Sears Stores in Texas Found New Life
In-person shoppers may have dwindled, but two big adaptive reuse projects in Texas show that many shuttered Sears stores still occupy valuable real estate that can once again anchor a development. The two Texas projects, one in Dallas and the other in Houston, exemplify how to successfully convert department stores into new uses that fill a community need. One, located in South Dallas, will soon host two outpatient medical facilities totaling 150,000 square feet. Another, in downtown Houston, has reopened as a 266,000-square-foot “innovation hub” with office space, prototyping labs and other amenities for nascent businesses.
LoopNet spoke with the developers behind both projects to ascertain why they were attracted to the former Sears stores, how they converted the buildings to new uses and whether their projects offer a blueprint for revitalizing malls across the country.
Warehouse to Wares: Vision for Vibrant Retail Destination Starts with Industrial Conversion
When Gregory Freedman and Daniel Lebensohn, Founders and Co-CEOs of BH3 Management, first toured the building that would become their Fabrick development, they decided on the spot that they would purchase it. The twist? The two were standing outside a dilapidated 1970s automotive warehouse that had been vacant for a decade, and located on a sparsely developed block in Fort Lauderdale, Florida — not the most inspiring landscape for the hip retail scene they were envisioning.
Freedman and Lebensohn say their gut renovation of Fabrick, a 24,000-square-foot development, is more than an adaptive reuse project — it’s the catalyst for a neighborhood placemaking strategy.
Motorcycle Marque Norton Revs Up for Renewal Under New Roof
Norton — the iconic, 124-year-old British motorcycle manufacturer — suddenly needed a new home just as the pandemic started rumbling. From an empty distribution warehouse, the Norton family created a "theater of manufacturing," or a space that encompasses a high-tech industrial manufacturing facility as well as a showroom, a mechanical customer service center, an R&D hub, a historical art gallery, a hosting area for events and a place for at least 150 people to work.
Skateboarding Under Skylights in a Montréal Office
The cornerstone of software firm GSoft's culture is skateboarding, which the founders wanted to incorporate into their new Montreal office. But just hanging a few skateboard decks on the wall wouldn’t do. Having bonded over skating in college, the founders had set up an “extreme” but not particularly functional half-pipe in their former perch, and despite profound growth, they wanted to keep that startup spirit kicking.
Working with a large, open industrial warehouse space, the natural solution and shared vision for this design-build project became centered around the idea of making the whole space “rideable.”
How One Company Created an HQ Designed To Lure Employees Back to the Office
As workers begin to return to the office, many of them are highly conscious of wanting to derive the maximum benefits from working in person. Two common pillars of the in-person office experience for many employees are community and supportive design. Increasingly, though, a third element, biophilia — which describes a person’s relationship with nature and, in this context, refers to the process of bringing the beauty of the natural world into the office environment — has become increasingly important for numerous office workers.
Bonduelle, a French multinational company focused on the industrial transformation of vegetables, took all three of these factors into account when designing its new offices, nicknamed Station B.
Industrial-to-Office Conversion Satisfies Appetite for Adaptive Reuse
In an evolving industrial district in Houston, a coworking and tech hub born from a warehouse adaptive reuse project is bringing in about $10 more per square foot than Williams Tower, one of the city’s most iconic buildings, according to Paul Coonrod, founder and managing principal of Houston real estate investment company Pagewood.
With this disparity, Coonrod saw an opportunity to capitalize on the appetite for adaptive reuse projects and pursue multiple industrial-to-office conversions on a two-acre lot adjacent to The Cannon, and transform the former early 2000s-built music recording and practice studio buildings into a 40,000-square-foot creative office community dubbed The Quad.
Hip, Cantilevered Hotel Activates Historic Stretch of San Antonio River Walk
At the 195-room Canopy by Hilton perched on a tiny footprint in Alamo City, the most premium rooms aren't at the top of the tower with sweeping views, but instead lay low, floating just above the tranquil San Antonio River. Designed by Lake|Flato architects and Gensler, the historic-meets-hip property’s allure is all about access to the waterfront and San Antonio Riverwalk.
This Pair of Toronto Office Buildings Bridges Past and Future
In Toronto’s Liberty Village neighborhood, the 60 and 80 Atlantic Avenue project combines the adaptive reuse and expansion of a former wine warehouse at 60 Atlantic with a new, five-story mass timber construction at 80 Atlantic, along with a public courtyard and restaurant patio area between the two structures.
“Both buildings were meant to be tied together into one ecosystem,” Jamie Zeldin, director of asset management at Hullmark, who developed the project, told LoopNet, adding that it was of critical importance for the vision “to integrate a new building sensitively into the heritage fabric of the neighboring buildings and Liberty Village as a whole.”
A Look Inside London’s ‘Smartest’ Office Building
Southworks is the first building in the United Kingdom to achieve the Smart Building Certification Platinum certificate, and only the second in the world to do so. As a unique and first-of-its-kind building in the U.K., the 70,000-square-foot Southworks project sets a benchmark for sustainability, ESG initiatives, built-in technology and occupant well-being among office buildings.
Bank to Beans: Coffee Shop Owners Repurpose a Mid-Century Icon
One of the first things that caught Alissa Hodge’s eye when she moved to Columbus, Indiana, with her family was the former Irwin Union Bank building, a 1960s-era structure designed by renowned Chicago architect Harry Weese. He meant for the gray-glazed brick building to reflect a child’s vision of a castle, though it’s nicknamed the “dead horse” by locals because its four brick towers stretch upward like legs.
A decade later, Hodge and her husband opened their second specialty coffee shop location in the former bank, redesigning the 5,000-square-foot space to preserve the historic architecture of the mid-century icon.
