Ryder Puts Miami Corporate Headquarters Up for Sale
The logistics firm will seek a smaller office footprint due to remote work
By Jeff Ostrowski March 2, 2022 4:40 pm
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Logistics company Ryder System hopes to sell its corporate headquarters near Miami, saying it needs less office space in a post-pandemic world. Ryder System, a member of the Fortune 500, paid $42 million for the 16.8-acre campus at 11690 Northwest 105th Street in unincorporated Miami-Dade County in 2014, according to property records.
Two years into the pandemic, Ryder’s parking lots and cubicles remain mostly empty. Many of the 800 employees at the company headquarters have embraced remote work, Amy Federman, Ryder System’s vice president of corporate communications, told Commercial Observer.
“Since March 2020, many of our corporate headquarters employees have been working remotely or adopted a hybrid schedule, and we believe this will continue into the future,” Federman said in an email. “As such, like many companies post-pandemic, Ryder has determined that we need much less office space than we currently have at our headquarters building.”
Commercial real estate firm JLL (JLL) is marketing the 238,420-square-foot office complex, according to an offering document obtained by Commercial Observer. JLL says the property could remain an office campus or be repurposed as industrial space.
“The property’s land use and zoning designations allow most office and industrial uses to be developed, including warehouse and industrial,” JLL’s document says.
The pandemic accelerated demand for distribution space while dampening demand for offices. Many office landlords and employers insist that white-collar employees will come back to in-person work, but Ryder System’s plan to downsize the physical footprint of its headquarters tells a different story.
According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, among Americans who say their jobs can mainly be done from home, fully 59 percent are working from home all or most of the time.
Ryder System will keep its corporate headquarters in Miami-Dade County, either as a tenant or as an owner of a smaller building, Federman said.
“We are considering all options, including leasing space at the current location, or leasing or purchasing a new location in Miami-Dade County,” she said. “Regardless, if we do move to a new location, we don’t plan to move far. Miami has been Ryder’s home for nearly 90 years.”
Ryder System reported revenue of $9.7 billion for 2021, up from $8.4 billion in 2020.
It is one of four Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Miami-Dade County. The others are homebuilder Lennar and energy company World Fuel Services, both of Miami, and engineering firm MasTec of Coral Gables.
Jeff Ostrowski can be reached at jostrowski@commercialobserver.com.
