Good Office Design Is Good Business

In the summer of 2023, Greatland Realty Partners and Barings acquired an approximately 515,000-square-foot office campus at 275 Grove Street in Newton, Mass., for $117.5 million. The property had last traded just three years earlier for $235 million. It was almost 40 percent vacant for the first time in its 25-year history. The market was skeptical.

Less than two years later, Global Partners LP — a Fortune 500 company that had occupied its previous headquarters for 34 years — acquired an equity interest in the building and signed a long-term, 125,000-square-foot lease. Common area utilization had been transformed, and the asset was stabilized.

What happened in between was not a cosmetic refresh and not a gut renovation. It was a disciplined, strategy-driven reinvestment in the building’s shared amenities and common spaces that demonstrates a simple principle: Design, executed with business objectives in mind, is one of the most effective tools for protecting and enhancing asset value.

For more than two decades, 275 Grove Street was the premier suburban office complex in the Newton market. Developed in 2000 from a former warehouse, it was the building companies loved and rarely left. Then, in 2020, the previous owner acquired the property with plans to convert it to laboratory space. When the lab market softened in 2022, the owner pivoted to a motivated sale. 

Greatland and Barings saw what others missed: a building with exceptional bones, strong location and unrealized potential in a market that had written off the asset.

The data supports the bet. From 2020 to 2024, prime buildings nationally registered 48 million square feet of positive net absorption while the rest of the office market lost 170 million square feet of occupancy. The flight to quality is not a narrative, but rather a measurable shift in demand toward buildings that invest in design and experience.

The question facing ownership was how to create meaningful impact on budget while delivering the amenities that premium occupants now expect.

Elkus Manfredi Architects could have recommended a $2 million refresh or a $30 million gut renovation. Neither would have been right. The challenge was identifying the precise intervention points where investment would generate the highest return. What would activate the space, define functional zones, and signal to prospective occupants that this is a forward-looking asset?

We worked with Greatland and Barings to develop a strategically targeted scope that included comprehensive renovation of the campus’ central atrium, improved definition of seating and activity zones, upgraded occupant entries, the addition of meeting spaces, improved dining areas, and an expansion of the fitness center by 3,500 square feet into adjacent former service space.

Every decision was grounded in a business case. The atrium renovation targeted what we saw as the building’s most underperforming square footage: a ground-floor space that occupants and visitors simply circulated through but never activated or occupied. The addition of amenities such as dining areas and the fitness center expansion were about removing a competitive disadvantage relative to newer product and responding to the expectations of modern companies.

Midway through the renovation, ownership signed Global Partners to relocate its headquarters to the building. In the commercial real estate world, a long-term headquarters relocation lease from a creditworthy company is the signal that matters. It tells the market the asset performs, the location works, and the investment strategy was sound. 

It is also consistent with a broader pattern: Amenity-driven prime buildings generate lease terms averaging 21 months longer than others. When organizations find the right environment, they commit.

Beyond the headline lease, the renovation fundamentally changed how existing occupants used the building. The campus atrium had been a “circulation highway” and functioned purely as a space people moved through on the way to somewhere else. After the renovation, it became the “sticky” place people chose to be. Occupants work from the atrium regularly, hold informal meetings over coffee, and eat lunch in the café. It has a pulse, energy, the feel of a vibrant workplace rather than a desolate suburban office building. 

This sort of transformation is what drives occupant satisfaction, and satisfaction is what drives retention, re-leasing velocity, and the ability to hold or push rents.

The flight to quality is real, but quality is not exclusively an urban core phenomenon. A well-positioned suburban asset with the right amenity package can compete effectively for companies that would otherwise default to downtown.

Amenities are not static. What appealed to companies in 2016 will not necessarily appeal to them in 2026 or 2036. Commercial buildings require continuous competitive scrutiny, and the owners who treat their assets as evolving hospitality products rather than fixed structures are the ones whose buildings maintain Class A status across cycles.

And, perhaps most importantly, where you invest matters as much as how much you invest. Greatland and Barings didn’t overspend. They spent precisely, guided by a design strategy that tied every decision to a business objective. The market rewards owners who understand that design is a business tool. It punishes those who treat it as discretionary. 

275 Grove Street demonstrates that strategic reinvestment done in a targeted, disciplined manner and guided by clear objectives produces measurable returns even in challenging markets.

Elizabeth Lowrey, a workplace strategist and workspaces designer, is a principal at Elkus Manfredi Architects.