Office Parks

Retrofitting D.C.’s Suburbs for a New Era
How to equip suburban sprawl for a different future.

A New Life for the Suburban Office Park?
With more and more employers downsizing and moving to areas with more urban amenities, large suburban office parks offer an opportunity for increased density and mixed-use development.

Suburban Office Parks Gain New Life As Millennials Grow Up
With some tweaks and upgrades, surburban office parks are reinventing themselves to attract new tenants and the millennials ready to start families in the 'burbs.

How Office Parks and Corporate Campuses Evolved
The office park has become a suburban given, disliked by some, but once it represented a utopian vision of work away from the city. Here's a look at how the Silicon Valley model developed, and where it might be going.

High Tech Embraces Suburban-Style Office Park Thinking
Critics claim tech companies such as Apple and Google are guilty of repeating past mistakes of urban development by creating suburban campuses that isolate themselves from the surrounding community.

Report: Office Parks Increasingly Obsolete
According to a report prepared by commercial real estate firm Newmark, Grubb, Knight and Frank (NGKF), the office park model has lost the competitive edge. That is, unless it provides access to transit and urban amenities as well as parking.

Coming Soon to Dallas-Fort Worth: 8 Million Square Feet of Office Buildings
Large corporations are making huge investments in new office parks in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, reflecting a desire to attract young talent with Google- and Facebook-like workplaces.
Self-Driving Buses Coming in 2016 to an Office Park in San Ramon, California
The self-driving future is coming sooner than you might have expected—to a suburban office park in California's Bay Area.

Land Use Planning to Activate Downtown Nightlife
The Arlington County, Virginia downtown district of Rosslyn will provide the region's latest case study of a commercial district leveraging land use regulations to activate a dormant nightlife.

Status Report: the Rise of Innovation Districts
Last year, the "innovation district" rose to prominence as a way to describe urban knowledge economy epicenters. This report from Bruce Katz and Brookings describes how the phenomenon continues to evolve.

Chicago's Golden Goose
Once known as "Little Hell" for its copious industrial plants, Goose Island is a rare, relatively undeveloped investment opportunity. Centrally located, it may one day house swanky offices.
Google's Loss is LinkedIn's Gain in Silicon Valley
The city of Mountain View chose to allot most of the redevelopment rights in its much sought-after North Bayshore area not to the city's largest employer and taxpayer but to LinkedIn's more conventional proposal.

On the Creative Neighborhood's Two Basic Forms
Richard Florida discusses a study comparing the neighborhoods that house "creative" industries. Science and tech tends to favor low-density office parks, while arts and cultural industries prefer mixed-use urban districts.

Tech Giants Bank on Growth, Acquire More Space
To provide room for long-term expansion, companies like Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn are buying up even more Bay Area real estate. Their flush cash reserves have them nudging out the traditional development and investment crowd.
Form-Based Code Pitched for Sale of Commercial Campus in Connecticut
Owners of a 173-acre office campus in Simsbury, Connecticut are hoping that by adopting a form-based code as a guide for potential redevelopment of the site, potential buyers have more reason to pull the trigger on a deal.
Philadelphia Skyscraper Rewrites the Corporate Headquarters Script
Comcast recently released designs for a $1.2 billion skyscraper in Downtown Philadelphia. The building’s potential starkly contrasts the suburban model of commercial office parks.
The 'Cinderella Treatment': An Alternative Approach to Saving the Suburban Office Park
As suburban office parks struggle to lure tenants not decamping for more urban environments, some are investing princely sums to renovate their buildings in the hope of capturing a slice of the shrinking pie.

Developing a Second Life for the Suburban Office Park
Across America, developers and municipalities are trying to adapt a relic of the sprawling post-war suburbs for a more urbane 21st century. Can office park makeovers revive these increasingly barren landscapes?
How Mixed-Use Centers Can Supplant Single-Use Office Parks
In the latest article from Better Cities & Towns' series on healthy, walkable town centers, Geoff Dyer offers insight into the ways that locating office space in mixed-use centers can improve economic vitality.
Companies Ditch Suburban Office Parks
Suburban areas were once strongholds of corporate campuses and office parks. But there's a shift underway that's drawing companies back to cities.
Pagination
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City of Albany
UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
Mpact (formerly Rail~Volution)
Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
City of Piedmont, CA
Great Falls Development Authority, Inc.
HUDs Office of Policy Development and Research