Activating Ground Floor Space In Office Towers
While most looking to breathe life into morbid urban scenes tend to view late 20th century office towers as negatives, in reality they can be great starting spaces for remaking a district’s image. Although many are poorly integrated with the streets surrounding them, a good number of these buildings are home to existing businesses and underutilized lobby space.
In Uptown Charlotte, the age of the grand lobby and view restricting reflective glass is over. Ground floor lobbies once anchored by large bank branches are being replaced with restaurants and bars, eliminating dead zones previously created when workers go home. Here, to remain competitive in the marketplace, forward-thinking landlords are revamping their ground floors to provide amenities that appeal to today’s tenants.
For example, an office building with a coffee shop or beer garden on the ground floor is likely to appeal to a greater range of tenants than one with an empty grand 1980s era lobby. As such, towers once void of activity at nights and weekends now have uses that stimulate foot traffic on an around the clock basis, giving the average person an impression of being in a place with lots of things to do.
