David Arena
David Arena
Head of Global Real Estate at JPMorgan Chase
David Arena is still bullish on the office — one office in particular: JPMorgan Chase (JPM)’s new headquarters going up at 270 Park Avenue in Manhattan. The banking giant — the largest private occupier of office space in Manhattan, and one of the largest nationwide — has also been pivoting in its approach to its footprint in the pandemic.
“I think we’re constantly reassessing our real estate portfolio, and you could say we’re always looking at our workforce as well, finding ways to make them happier, healthier, more productive,” Arena said. “COVID helped accelerate trends in the workplace industry that have been around for 25 years — things like sustainability, health and wellness, even hospitality.”
Arena said he believes JPMorgan avoided having to go back to the drawing board on major aspects of 270 Park. The 60-story building is going up with a fabric of sensors and artificial intelligence that Arena says will provide an experience personal to visitors and employees.
“Even though we did most of our planning for the building at 270 pre-COVID, we relitigated every decision during the pandemic to make sure we weren’t missing anything in order to meet the need of a future workforce,” Arena said. “For the most part, all of the things that we planned pre-COVID are relevant now in what you could say is the post-COVID era.”
Arena expects Chase’s office portfolio and 270 Park Avenue to stay relevant as the pandemic wanes, even though the company is not trying to fight the trend of employee demand for flexibility in where they report to work.
“Flexibility around your time in the office is here to stay, it’s consistent with our philosophy pre- or post-COVID of work-life balance for our employees, and it seems to be working quite well,” Arena said.
With over a decade at JPMorgan Chase, Arena was previously at brokerage and management company Grubb & Ellis, where he was tri-state chairman (and where he appeared on earlier Power 100 lists). Prior to that he was chief strategic officer for brokerage JLL and head of global real estate and U.S. corporate services for Morgan Stanley
