The Mixed Use Workplace of the Future

All over the world, the preferred location for the ideal workplace is changing is seeing a sea change.

In the US, where the suburban office park was born in response to the flight of the white-collar workforce to the suburbs, away from the then-dangerous and dirty downtowns of major US cities, back in the 70s and 80s, is now reversing. The younger Gen Y and Millennial members of the workforce, who make up the majority of employees in the office-using industries - tech, media, R&D and financial + professional services - prefer the vibrant lifestyle of the newly revitalized downtown areas of cities such as Boston, New York, San Francisco and so on. As a consequence, most major companies are moving their HQs and major facilities back to the cities. The latest and greatest example of this is the decision made by GE to move to Boston's vibrant Seaport District, from the calm comfort of its former HQ in suburban Connecticut. 

Amazon is doing the same in downtown Seattle, as are other industry bell weathers including Facebook, Salesforce, Novartis, Pfizer, Biogen, PwC and major banks. Younger employees prefer short commutes, ideally on public transit, on foot or by bike, and like to enjoy a more active, dynamic lifestyle more suited to the restaurants, pubs, cafes and entertainment avenues found in the cities than in the idyllic calm of the suburbs, where one has to jump in the car to get to anything at all, outside of the home. Workers in the 18 - 40 age group are also more interested in being closer to their peers, in socializing and engaging in collaborative working, which in itself requires physical proximity and often-serendipitous meetings, even in this age of virtual presence and augmented reality. 

As India's service industries rapidly move up the value chain, be it in technology or financial services, the preferences of the young workforce - which has long since been the dynamo that has propelled the Indian tech industry to pole position worldwide - will become even more sophisticated to cater to. The need to live and work within a vibrant, urban context will apply as much to India as in the US or Europe. However, India has a few obstacles to overcome to fulfill this need.

Firstly, our cities lack the sort of diverse and large-scale "Downtowns" that global gateway cities such as New York, London, Boston, San Francisco, Singapore or Munich can claim. Most major Indian cities developed out of congested, dated cores that were built around traditional administrative centers or marketplaces. Most of our cities lack the archetypal dense Central Business Districts, that we're so familiar with in Manhattan or Canary Wharf. Yes, we have a few clusters of malls and night clubs, bars and restaurants in cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, but those are the exceptions, rather than the rule.

Secondly, the Indian model of office development is still stuck in "office park" mode, which is a blind copy of the already outdated suburban office park typology, now abandoned in its birth place, the US. Our office parks, with a few exceptions, are almost purely made of densely packed office buildings or in some cases, office buildings scattered within sprawling, artificially landscaped campuses (perhaps best referred to as the "Infosys model?"). Be it the flagship Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai or the majority of the many, vast IT parks in Bangalore, mixed use is in precious short supply.

Thirdly, Indian cities still have precious little practical mass transit or public transportation despite Billions of dollars of investments into metro networks and fleets of swanky new buses in many cities over the recent past. It will take many years, if not at least a full decade, before our key employment hubs even begin to approach the sort of transportation access that's characteristic of many European and Asian cities, and in select US cities. It suffices to say that true "walk to work, play and live" is going to be an exception not the rule in India at this time, despite the lofty promises often seen in the brochures of many a real estate developer.

While it may take a very long time, if at all, to change the urban structure and fabric of our cities, with hurdles such as population density, the inability to acquire land at will and the massive investment needed, a more immediate solution is available through well planned mixed use development that incorporate social infrastructure into office clusters. JLL's excellent report entitled "The Convergence of Retail and Office Real Estate in India" spells out how this is already happening and will likely happen more often in key markets such as Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. While JLL calls the synergistic combination of office and retail as Office Retail Complexes, the real future lies in full-scale mixed use with different uses such as office, retail, residential and hospitality seamlessly weaved into each other within a project or a neighborhood. This not only creates the vibrant ecosystem that attracts the most desirable demographic among the workforce but also solves issues such as gaps in transportation infrastructure and the resistance of the urban fabric to wholesale change, by co-locating the various components and bringing the development timeline and mix under the control of a single developer/entity.

Mixed use developments also benefit from having diverse income streams which help insulate them from cycles in a single asset class and give these projects a strong competitive edge over their single use neighbors. This becomes even more pronounced in the case of Tier 2 destinations such as Trivandrum, Vizag or Coimbatore, where the stock of office, retail and hospitality assets is usually more limited compared to the bigger, Tier 1 cities.

The Taurus Downtown Technopark project, being developed in Trivandrum, India, pioneers the mixed use design philosophy in a Tier 2 location by closely integrating nearly 2 Million square feet of office spaces with over 800,000 square feet of retail, entertainment, dining and amenities, all located at the heart of a business park that already has about 10 Million square feet of operational office space but very few social amenities. The project has been conceptualized to attract and retain the best talent for the companies occupying space in its office buildings by creating truly world-class amenities within a few minutes' walk from every inch of office space and setting up "third places" - informal meeting venues - that catalyze collaborative work. It provides the most immediate of catchments to the retailers and other non-office tenants, including the 175-key hotel that is part of the complex, with nearly 25,000 people working in its own offices and a further 20,000 in other nearby office buildings.

Put together after over a year's worth of iterative design work, the Downtown Technopark project offers an opportunity for office tenants, large and small, to tap into a young, highly-motivated workforce, with relatively low attrition levels and at lower total costs of operation than in Tier 1 markets, and on the other hand, offers retailers, hospitality operators and restaurateurs the chance to tap into a large, co-located audience of young, high earners. All encapsulated within a highly sustainable, digitally enabled physical framework made up of over 4.7 Million square feet of high quality real estate.

The Future is indeed in the Downtown!