Office Space Per Worker Will Drop to 100 Square Feet or Below for Many Companies Within Five Years, According to New Research From CoreNet Global, February 28, 2012

ATLANTA, Feb. 28, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- New data released today from CoreNet Global show for the first time that for many companies, the average allocation of office space per person in North America will fall to 100 square feet or below within the next five years.

By 2017, at least 40% of the companies responding indicated they will reach this all-time low benchmark of individual space utilization, which has been the case in Europe for the past several years but is now heading for the Americas.

The average for all companies for square feet per worker in 2017 will be 151 square feet, compared to 176 square feet today, and 225 square feet in 2010.

"The main reason for the declines," said Richard Kadzis , CoreNet Global's Vice President of Strategic Communications, "is the huge increase in collaborative and team-oriented space inside a growing number of companies that are stressing 'smaller but smarter' workplaces against the backdrop of continuing economic uncertainty and cost containment."

CoreNet Global, which conducted the survey, is the worldwide association for corporate real estate and workplace professionals. . . .

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So while the Reston Task Force is assuming that each office worker will require 300 gross square feet (GSF) per office worker, US corporations are looking to drive the square footage requirement to 100 GSF per office worker over the next decade. 

The Task Force heard from local commercial real estate broker Jones/Lang/LaSalle that local companies are looking for spaces well below 200 GSF/office worker less than a year.  Even GSA is looking for space on the order of 115-180 GSF per worker they said. 

All of this means that the Task Force may recommend office densities as much as three times the requirement for the number of employees that are being forecast by GMU for the Dulles corridor.  Three times as many employees in Reston than intended would seriously jeopardize the residential/non-residential balance the community is seeking--and is generally required by transit-oriented development--in the urbanization of its Metrorail station areas.