CHANGE OF PLANS:
One Beale drops hotel idea, begins thinking office space.
Developers of the high-profile One Beale project have put a hotel tower on hold and are focusing instead on plans for an office building that could house six to eight companies.
Carlisle Corp. vice president Chance Carlisle provided an update Monday on the project, saying in an interview that plans are firm for the earlier proposed 30-story apartment tower, while the office building’s size is still undetermined.
One Beale originally was to include a pair of iconic riverfront high rises housing a luxury hotel and upscale apartments atop a parking garage placed primarily underground, giving the project a commanding presence on the city skyline.
The high cost of that idea led developers late last year to consider spreading out expenses by adding a third high rise for offices. Under the plan Carlisle outlined Monday, designers would shelve the 22-story hotel, put a bigger but less costly garage on a nearby parking lot and home in on what could turn out to be a six-story office building. It would be the first opened in Downtown in about a decade.
Plans for the $100-million-plus project at the foot of Beale Street unfolded as ServiceMaster Global Holdings separately launched a search for a new headquarters campus. Carlisle declined to comment about ServiceMaster and One Beale. The home services company is considering relocating from East Memphis, where it employs about 2,200 workers in four buildings covering about 360,000 square feet, and perhaps moving to another state.
“Since the inception of One Beale, Class A office space has been envisioned as part of the project,” Carlisle said. “The current design plan envisions 175,000 square feet (of office space) that could be expanded significantly should the right prospect materialize for us. We understand from reading The Commercial Appeal that ServiceMaster is searching for space. We strongly hope, as lifelong Downtown stakeholders, that ServiceMaster will look at relocating downtown.”
Carlisle Corp., a Memphis-based restaurant operator and real estate developer, can build the office project without a big headquarters tenant, Carlisle said.
The office building is tentatively proposed for six stories and 175,000 square feet of topquality space, based on what Carlisle officials believe the demand could be without a headquarters-type tenant.
The building could be scaled up to 14 stories and 420,000 square feet, and Carlisle said the company would spend the next eight months gauging demand and seeking prelease commitments. “We’d need to get 75-80 percent pre-leased,” Carlisle said. “It’s too expensive a building to build on (speculation).”
Two to three companies already have expressed interest in moving to Downtown, although they would not bring One Beale to the 75 percent pre-lease threshold, Carlisle said. Downtown still could draw a wave of employers from the suburbs and the region, he said. Gentrification has spurred inquiries for office space.
Office construction has been stymied in Downtown because building in the center city requires expensive reworking of the aged infrastructure, pushing up office