**Finalist – Top Office Development – Multitenant

A speculative office building in South End for a site along Summit Avenue was originally envisioned by a local development firm prior to the recession but was later realized by Florida-based Stiles Corp.

300 West Summit, a 64,000-square-foot office building between Church and Mint streets, includes three stories for office tenants and is now home to OneMagnify, Environment Resources Management, BR+A Consulting Engineers, Colliers, The Providence Group, Upstream and Stiles. Those deals make the building more than 80% occupied, with the brokerage team anticipating the building to be fully leased by year end.

South End is no longer a stranger to office development, but speculative projects like 300 West Summit were considered a significant bet on the area going back just a couple of years. In fact, when Stiles revived the project in late 2016, there were only a handful of other office projects being built in the area. Stiles broke ground on 300 West Summit in mid-2017 and delivered it earlier this year.

The site, which is less than an acre, was especially challenging to develop because of its topography, size and city height restrictions. Parking was developed below ground to help maximize the site and to meet desires and expectations set by the city and area residents.

A rooftop terrace for tenants is considered a signature feature of the project.

Key Players:

Owner/developer: Stiles Corp.
Architect: Robert Johnson Architects
Civil engineer: Urban Design Partners
General contractor: Myers & Chapman Inc.
Lawyer: Steven Deutsch at Frank, Weinberg & Black and Jon Goldberg at Alexander Ricks
Bank: Fifth Third Bank
Leasing brokers: Stephen Woodard and Charley Leavitt at JLL

By the numbers:

$23M – project value
0.8 – site acreage
2,000 – square footage of the rooftop terrace

Biggest challenge?

“Our biggest challenge with this project was trying to fit a 31,000-square-foot floorplate onto less than an acre. The process of figuring out life-safety egress, civil utilities and construction logistics all while accommodating the neighbors took extensive coordination between the entire design and construction team. We worked closely with the neighbors throughout the planning and coordination of the project to ensure a seamless process and the least impact to their day-to-day experience during construction.”
– Chris Grenier, senior vice president of development, Stiles Corp. Carolinas