WPX Downtown HQ

[shavethewhales]

Hopefully that means they've already landed their first tenant. Although I'd rather a big company come in and buy the building whole, it was always far more likely that the building would be divided into suites/floors.

[TulsaBeMore]

I think some of it likely had to do with MARS being based in McLean too and Hersey is just up the road in PA, so there's companies in that region they can recruit from. Chicago and Dallas definitely would have made sense too, but my guess is some of the executives didn't want to live there. The bonus of being in the capital and being able to have more visibility in the lobbying community probably didn't hurt either. Nestle has a lot of ties to Europe and DC is easier to get to than LA, Chicago or Dallas too. International flights into the NE are generally cheaper than Chicago or Dallas given you can fly into a variety of cities even outside of DC and then take a train into DC if needed and a flight into DC instead of LA takes off hours of travel time as well. A lot of the execs had stronger ties to the NE than anywhere else - generally at the end of the day that is usually what it boils down to is where the execs want it to be and they'll justify it for whatever other reason they can figure out.

LA has been a challenging market for the more corporate world given it's more of an arts and entertainment focused region. Most of the big HQ's there have struggled for years finding and retaining good talent compared to places like NY, Boston, DC and even areas like Dallas, Chicago, etc. that are just different culture wise and attract different types of people to move to those areas than LA does.

This may be for a different board or even website, ha!  - you're knowledge on this ---  I believe what you say about recruiting, etc.  Mars is HQd in McLean, but isn't it just a few in the c-suite & support--- maybe 30-40 people?  Aren't major ops in Hackettstown NJ, Chicago and Franklin, TN?   Isn't it sort of like Exxon HQs in Irving w/ massive ops in The Woodlands or Kimberly-Clark in Irving w/ main ops in Neenah, WI, etc.  I know Nestle has big ops outside of Cleveland (Stouffers/pizza/prepared meals), St. Louis (Purina), Seattle (Starbucks Partnership) but their Arlington space is also full of people running various U.S. packaged foods, beverages, coffee --- lots of marketers, operational stuff. Wonder if they'll leave Nature's Bounty where it is or consolidate in VA.  Hershey is one of my favorite places --- first book report in 5th or 6th grade was on Milton S. Hershey.  On a family road trip around the time I was 40, I had to decide for time sake for us to spend two days in Hershey or nearby Gettysburg and Amish area.  I'm not even ashamed to say which I picked!  

[LandArchPoke]

This may be for a different board or even website, ha!  - your knowledge on this ---  I believe what you say about recruiting, etc.  Mars is HQd in McLean, but isn't it just a few in the c-suite & support--- maybe 30-40 people?  Aren't major ops in Hackettstown NJ, Chicago and Franklin, TN?   Isn't it sort of like Exxon HQs in Irving w/ massive ops in The Woodlands or Kimberly-Clark in Irving w/ main ops in Neenah, WI, etc.  I know Nestle has big ops outside of Cleveland (Stouffers/pizza/prepared meals), St. Louis (Purina), Seattle (Starbucks Partnership) but their Arlington space is also full of people running various U.S. packaged foods, beverages, coffee --- lots of marketers, operational stuff. Wonder if they'll leave Nature's Bounty where it is or consolidate in VA.  Hershey is one of my favorite places --- first book report in 5th or 6th grade was on Milton S. Hershey.  On a family road trip around the time I was 40, I had to decide for time sake for us to spend two days in Hershey or nearby Gettysburg and Amish area.  I'm not even ashamed to say which I picked!  

Mars does have a lot of operations everywhere, I think they're in the process or just finished a big corporate office expansion on the pet side in Nashville. The HQ in McLean has about 200-300 people working there. The Mars family is just very low key, not flashy people. Jacqueline Mars lives in Nova and about the only time you've ever seen her in the press was when she caused a car accident in 2013. The HQ doesn't look like much but it does have a good amount of corporate and execs working out of it. They also have a facility in Germantown MD in the northern suburbs.

Here's an article about the relocation I was able to find, gives some additional details on the amount of incentives and their reasoning. One thing in there they mentioned is that the vast majority of Nestle operations and facilities are all on the east coast and so DC being in the middle of the east coast probably helped too.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/nestle-to-move-us-headquarters-to-arlington-bringing-750-jobs-to-the-region/2017/02/01/0ff6ec34-e40c-11e6-a547-5fb9411d332c_story.html

Nestle was one of the biggest economic development wins in that region to that date. The DC area had started getting really aggressive to try and diversify the economy away from government, after BRAC and especially sequestration that really hit the DC area hard. So they threw anything and everything at Nestle they could. Probably paid off, because after that you started to see other companies look at DC a bit different and now Amazon is obviously expanding there so the region has come a long way. It didn't always have the reputation is does now, DC really struggled as a region for a while especially as politics became more contentious and you'd see bursts of spending and expansion followed by dramatic consolidations through GSA and the CRE market there was like a yo-yo for a few decades.

[LandArchPoke]

I'm not sure why, but if you look at this space you will be told the top two floors are not available. 

Anyone know the answer why?

I looked it up on Costar and it shows all the floors available still (they are slow to update stuff). Cushman's website for the OK offices doesn't have any of the listings looks like they are redoing the website so it's not very functional. Curious what source you saw that on? Would be interesting if it went the multi-tenant route, probably wouldn't be a bad thing to do that than sit and wait for a big tenant to take all or most of it. 

[TulsaBeMore]

Here's an article about the relocation I was able to find, gives some additional details on the amount of incentives and their reasoning. One thing in there they mentioned is that the vast majority of Nestle operations and facilities are all on the east coast and so DC being in the middle of the east coast probably helped too.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/nestle-to-move-us-headquarters-to-arlington-bringing-750-jobs-to-the-region/2017/02/01/0ff6ec34-e40c-11e6-a547-5fb9411d332c_story.html

Thanks for the good info and the article link.

[DTowner]

I looked it up on Costar and it shows all the floors available still (they are slow to update stuff). Cushman's website for the OK offices doesn't have any of the listings looks like they are redoing the website so it's not very functional. Curious what source you saw that on? Would be interesting if it went the multi-tenant route, probably wouldn't be a bad thing to do that than sit and wait for a big tenant to take all or most of it. 

When folks from my office toured the WPX building, they were told by the leasing agent that the top 2 floors are not available.

[shavethewhales]

5/15/21

Lots of windows going in already. Saw the brick mockup during mayfest. Looks like a darker, redder brick than the concept art, but looks good. No one likes yellow brick.

[ComeOnBenjals]

Brick going up on the NE side... looks pretty good!

[shavethewhales]

I wonder if they are planning on painting that brick black since it is shown as black material on the concept artwork. Or perhaps they have changed designs to use cheaper material. I'll withhold judgement until we see more...

[DowntownDan]

So Cimarex is probably leaving town. Thank goodness they gave us a building void of any architectural style and plopping it on top of a parking garage, right across from our cities most visible event venue. Build and leave, gotta love Tulsa's O&G companies.

[Oil Capital]

So Cimarex is probably leaving town. Thank goodness they gave us a building void of any architectural style and plopping it on top of a parking garage, right across from our cities most visible event venue. Build and leave, gotta love Tulsa's O&G companies.

Do you really think Cimarex will be leaving?

[DowntownDan]

Do you really think Cimarex will be leaving?

Anytime a Tulsa company merges with a Houston company, history says they're gone.

[Jake]

Isn't Cimarex primarily a Denver company?

[LandArchPoke]

Isn't Cimarex primarily a Denver company?

It just merged with Cabot (based in Houston) - my guess is either the Tulsa office or Denver office will close when they consolidate staff. Probably based on which lease expires the soonest. Maybe the fact that the office space in Tulsa is a lot cheaper than Denver will help keep them in Tulsa. Denver has seen a lot of O&G office closures as well lately. Cabot has a regional office in Pittsburgh and then just it's HQ in Houston I think. Given the assets under control, it'd make more sense for the Denver office to close since Cimarex has a big area in the Anadarko Basin in west Oklahoma but that's not always how things work. Cimarex's other big area is the Permian. Cabot I believe mostly only has operations in Pennsylvania. Cimarex lease is up in 2023 or early 2024 in Tulsa I think - if I remember correct it was a 10 year lease, and their lease in Denver looks to expire around 2026 and they occupy around 100,000 sq. ft.

[Tulsan]

So Cimarex is probably leaving town.

Probably not. This is the opposite of the DVN-WPX merger because there's no operational overlap between Cabot and Cimarex. Don't forget that Cimarex in Tulsa is the spin-off E&P division of Helmerich Payne. Cabot likely has no ability to take over management of these assets. Current Cimarex CEO will also be the new entity's CEO going forward. The only folks concerned at this moment should be the Cabot execs who just became redundant.

Weird merger though.