Rushed workers want more amenities in biz parks

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), Dec 2, 2003 by Chet Dembeck

The average employee is time poor.

That's why developers such as MIE Properties Inc. are including eateries, dry cleaners and hair salons in their business parks, said Jerry Wit, MIE's vice president of marketing.

The Catonsville-based commercial real estate developer has just completed and leased an 8,125-square-foot retail center at 6900 Dogwood Road. It was built specifically to serve the tenants of its 82-acre Windsor Corporate Park in Woodlawn. So far, tenant response has been so positive that MIE is breaking ground in January on a second 8,125-square-foot retail center to be built across the street from the first, Wit said.

The first questions tenants ask when they consider leasing is, where do they park and where do they eat? Wit said.

The just-completed center offers food, drinks and sweets from such well-known franchises as Subway and Baskin & Robbins/Dunkin' Donuts. Its tenants are also local businesses such as Alexander's Barbershop & Salon, Dogwood Liquors and Betty Brite Cleaners. Aside from making the industrial park more attractive to prospective leasers, such retail centers generate substantial revenue for MIE, while providing a captive customer base for the participating retailers.

These businesses are serving more than 1,000 employees from the park's major tenants, which include the Social Security Administration, General Services Administration, Pitney Bowes and Omnisource, according to Wit. MIE began developing the business park in 1998. It has nine buildings that are 95 percent leased.

But more eateries and other services will be needed as occupancy rates increase and the FBI opens its new, four-story, 165,000-square- foot field office by early 2005.

That's why the new center being built next year will have at least two restaurants and other services that could include a tanning salon, Wit said.

MIE is negotiating with an unnamed Italian restaurant and plans to lease space to an eatery specializing in Asian cuisine, Wit added.

Along with providing convenience, the retail centers keep workers from clogging up major roads in the area.

If half of 1,000 cars stay within the park during lunchtime, it will make a big difference on the volume of traffic, Witt said.

Meanwhile, tenants in the first center, such as Subway, are experiencing more business than expected, according to John Filipiak, Subway's new business development manager. During lunchtime, a line of customers daily extends outside of the store. But it's what happens after the lunch rush that is surprising.

We've been getting substantial nighttime business from area residents, said Filipiak.

Opening up in business parks is a new non-traditional strategy Subway has been employing rather successfully, according to Filipiak. The company has opened another store at MIE's Cromwell Business Park, located off Interstate 97 at Dorsey Road, near Baltimore-Washington International Airport.

This store is also doing well, Filipiak added. But the volume is not as high as Woodlawn because there aren't as many occupants.

Tom Maddux, president of Towson-based commercial Realtor KLNB, believes that industrial parks are a natural market for companies such as Subway because it has saturated its traditional marketplace.

That's all that's left, Maddux said.

However, Maddux cautions that retailers considering such a strategy should make sure the industrial park they're considering has ample employees working there to sustain their businesses.

You've got to have the population, said Maddux.