A regional professional services firm with a location in Nashville, TN had a lease expiration coming up within 18 months.  This location employed over two hundred employees and was a critical center of operations for the company.  The existing building met the company’s needs, but the space was outdated and functionally inefficient. Market rents in this submarket where trending upwards and moving to a new building would have increased the clients rent by at least 12-15 %.  The preference of the client was to extend the lease in the existing building.

An additional challenge was how best to minimize disruption to the employees and operations during the reconstruction of the premises if the decision were to renew in the current premises.

The client and Juniper determined that the best strategy would be to pursue two options. First, Juniper would test the market and create competition for the client’s current landlord  by issuing  RFPs to 3 competitive landlords. Concurrently, Juniper engaged the clients existing landlord and its design firm to work with the client to develop a space plan  and tenant improvement package to bring the space up to contemporary workplace standards. From this point we went through the process of developing a budget and acceptable terms and conditions for two options.

In addition, Juniper worked with the local economic development organization and applied for a job retention incentive to encourage the client to keep jobs within the community.

The client signed a 7-year lease extension and with the existing landlord. Due to the ability to create a competitive environment Juniper was able to secure a slightly below market rent and a turn-key tenant improvement allowance without any “out of pocket” capital contribution.

Additionally, the landlord agreed to provide temporary staging space within the building at no cost during the construction period.

The outcome was a totally new and modernized workplace, completed ahead of schedule and at  a favorable rental rate.