Downtown business owners try to keep smiling amid pandemic - 1736 Magazine, Summer 2020

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The conference room in Balch & Bingham LLP’s office suite in the SunTrust Building offers a wide view of downtown Augusta. OFFICE DEMAND continued from 33 THE NEW OFFICE The pandemic may have companies paying rent, or a mortgage, on office buildings they are not fully occupying. Many employees are working from home or coming into offices in staggered shifts to ensure maximum social distancing. The desire for isolation is particularly challenging in new offices, many of which have adopted open floor plans to remove perceived barriers between employee groups and promote collaboration. Offices such as TaxSlayer’s recently opened headquarters and Innovation & Technology Campus at the former YMCA building on Broad Street is 50,000 square feet of mostly open-office architecture. “Our employees have been resilient as we’ve seen changes to the way that we work,” TaxSlayer CEO Brian Rhodes said. The building at 945 Broad St. employs nearly 150, who help support the 300 customer service and seasonal employees who work in the company’s Evans office. “We are reevaluating our employee and workplace policies regularly and taking guidance from health officials. One thing is certain – our team at TaxSlayer has been adaptable” as the company worked through an extended tax season, Rhodes said. May believes the rebellion against 1980s-era cubicle culture in recent years will lose momentum the longer the pandemic grinds on. “All of a sudden you don’t want to be sitting three feet away from your buddy who’s coughing,” May said. However, he said he doesn’t believe future office Clients in the waiting area at Balch & Bingham LLP can see directly into a glass-walled meeting space. tenants will want a full-fledged return to compartmentalized offices. He expects to see hybrid designs that promote teamwork but give employees the option to meet in private when necessary. “I believe that face-to-face collaboration is important to the success of a business,” he said. “While a lot can be done at home, there is a lot to be said for a gathering place at work. At the end of the day, we’re social creatures.” Some believe Augusta stands to gain office jobs in the post-pandemic economy as employers and workers seek out lower-density cities that are less congested with people and cars. Augusta Downtown Development Authority Director Margaret Woodard said her group of counterparts in other cities across the state refer to the theory as the “rural renaissance.” 34 | 1736magazine.com
The 165,000-square-foot Shaffer-MacCartney Building, an architectural twin of the Hull-McKnight Building at the Georgia Cyber Center complex, is 80% occupied. Photographed in Augusta . “People are going to want more open spaces, more bike lanes and things like that,” she said. “Mid-sized cities like Augusta have a great opportunity to pick up workers looking for places that are less crowded and more affordable. The pandemic has proven you can work from anywhere.” The pandemic didn’t exist last spring when Benjamin H. Brewton needed a place to locate Birmingham, Ala.-based Balch & Bingham LLP’s new Augusta office. The attorney, whose primary focus is on heavily regulated industries, such as utilities, health care and banking, has practiced law in Augusta for 30 years. He previously worked for a firm whose office was in a 172-year-old renovated home on Greene Street. There is more than 4.6 million square feet of office space in Augusta’s urban core, but there was only one place Brewton wanted to be: the central business district. “It was very clear to me that the office space needed to be downtown,” Brewton said from his suite on the eighth floor of the SunTrust Building at 801 Broad St. “A great deal of what I do is litigation, and the courthouses are here, and I can look out the window and see all the hospitals and Plant Vogtle in the distance.” Brewton said he likes being able to walk to restaurants, the Augusta Common and Riverwalk Augusta. He said the pandemic has not made him regret his decision to open an office in the city’s most densely populated area. “Hopefully, it is a temporary thing that will be brought to heel,” he said. 1736magazine.com | 35
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Downtown business owners try to keep smiling amid pandemic - 1736 Magazine, Summer 2020

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