Milwaukee-based architecture firm Kahler Slater announced this week it will
relocate its downtown Milwaukee offices to the new
BMO Tower at 790 N. Water St., a 25-story glass office building that it helped design.
Glenn Roby, executive vice president of Kahler Slater, acknowledged in an interview with BizTimes that architectural firms don't normally occupy "Class A, top-of-line space" that buildings like the BMO Tower offer.
But, the firm saw opportunities from the market conditions influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic. Those opportunities ranged from the practical, such as taking advantage of sluggish demand from office space users. They also involved things more aspirational — the chance to mold a new space based on where the firm sees its future headed.
"I think it is just that perfect storm of things coming together," Roby said.
The pandemic put into overdrive a trend that Kahler Slater noticed happening in the industry for a while: The "flight to quality" among office users, said Roby. What especially make new buildings like the BMO Tower attractive are things like touchless elevators and modern building systems.
Even so, the uncertainty caused by the pandemic has many companies staying put, and extending their current leases by only a year or so while they wait for more stability. Kahler Slater initially considered taking that same path.
"But after doing a little more soul searching and rallying around this as an opportunity, our thought about it quickly changed," Roby said. "I think the difference for us is we have a clearly defined vision for what we want to do for the firm in the future. Rather (than) a discussion about risk, it became a discussion about the opportunity it gave us, which is very rare."
And because so many firms are not in the market for new space, it created an unbalance of supply and demand in the market that was favorable to Kahler Slater. That's one way it was able to pull the trigger on a move to the BMO Tower.
The other important factor enabling its move was that Kahler Slater is cutting in half the size of its physical space. Roby said if it wanted to maintain the roughly 30,000 square feet it now has at the ASQ Center in Westown, the firm would not have been able to afford the BMO Tower. Rather, it is leasing 15,000 square feet at the new location.
It is managing to maintain its current level of employees in a significantly smaller office space for a few reasons. Perhaps most notably, the space will be designed under the assumption that Kahler Slater will have a more hybrid workforce in the future, meaning people will more frequently opt to work from home.
Roby said his firm assumed that roughly 80% of its employees will be in the office on average following the pandemic. The space will be designed as such, emphasizing collaborative spaces while still having dedicated work spaces for employees. Roby put it this way: An employee may come in the office for a meeting, stay there to work between multiple meetings and go home to perform individual tasks.
"We're going to be focused on spaces that support value," he said.
Kahler Slater is also able to take advantage of the BMO Tower's more efficient floorplates and amenities such as its large conference room, meaning the firm won't need its own large conference space in its offices.
Kahler Slater and its 95 local employees will move into the new offices in August.
