New Commercial Building Welcomes New Tenants In Downtown Fredericton
FREDERICTON – 140 Carleton, owned and operated by Ross Ventures, welcomed two new tenants to their building on Monday, occupying two floors of the five-story building.
The building has been under construction since 2018 and the tenants consist of a financial services business and a law firm.
Since the pandemic began affecting the province in March, the need for commercial office space has been on the decline due to many businesses opting for working from home or holding off on expansions or moves to new spaces.
Amy Ross, Managing Director for Ross Ventures, expects this decline to be temporary.
“We do think the office market will come back but a lot of companies are just holding tight and putting all of their plans for spacing on hold for now, which is understandable,” Ross said. “A lot of people are pausing but the anticipation is that office space will come back and that work from home won’t be a permanent plan.”
Ross says two tenants put their plans to move into the new office building at 140 Carleton on hold, but across Ross Ventures she has not experienced any businesses leaving their office space permanently due to the pandemic.
“We haven’t had any vacancy based on the pandemic,” Ross said. “We are finding it a little more challenging to rent space right now. I don’t think it’s because people are working from home, I think people are just pausing future plans because they don’t know what it’s going to look like after the pandemic.”
The building had originally been expected to host retail space on the first floor with commercial offices on the floors above. However, the pandemic made the restaurants keen on entering the space reconsider.
“We assume there will be some vacancy on the two floors that are vacant now. We assume we will hold that vacancy for a number of months,” said Ross.
The building is located downtown with smart building technology that can monitor weather, occupancy, and daylight hours in order to automatically adjust the building’s systems to reduce energy costs and control lights, blinds, security systems, the elevator, and the HVAC.
Ross says that while there have been setbacks due to the pandemic, Ross Ventures remains “very hopeful” that the future of office space is positive.
“The pandemic has given many organizations the opportunity to test work from home and some will find it works well but for many, the office is a necessary part of business life and where the best collaboration takes place,” said Ross.
While it is impossible to say for certain what office spaces will look like in the future, Ross imagines a future where working remotely and in an office coexist.
“We can’t predict what the post-pandemic world looks like fully yet but believe the future will be characterized by organizations determining the right balance of remote work within office work,” said Ross. “Some may decide they need more space while others need less and others may want a different design that meets new needs.”
Liam Floyd is a reporter for Huddle. Send him story suggestions: [email protected].