Our new office
Published on: Monday, March 14th, 2016
Over the course of our 10 years in existence I’ve heard different versions of “You guys need to buy a building, it’s better to own than it is to rent.” Granted most of these comments come from real estate agents, but it’s pretty much something that is assumed to be true, which I take issue with.
First of all it’s important to analyze a company’s ability to even purchase a building. Generally speaking 20% down is a minimum amount to have to fork over, and frankly a small or new business may be in a position to use that capital better by investing it back into their operation, or other assets.
Then there is the issue of the space itself. Sometimes it takes years for a company to become established and know what a fixed asset like a building would look like to work well with their operation. For example, if during the 1st couple of years you are a small firm with few employees you cannot see what a larger operation should look like. It takes reaching a certain size to be able to design a good work flow inside a building, because we all know that starting out everyone is doing a little bit of everything just to keep the doors open. So buying before you’re ready means you’ve taken a chunk of your liquidity and locked it into what could become an inferior design.
There are other reasons not to buy an office space but then, of course, there are good reasons to move. You can’t just buy an office because that’s the conventional wisdom. Do the homework.
That said, we have recently acquired a new property at 3152 Leavenworth St, in Omaha where we will be moving to in the latter half of the year. Our reason is simple, we’ve reached a point in time where we have become a leader in the industry and need to have a building designed for effecting a most efficient deployment of our processes and assets. It is also strategically located near the interstate which will help us to deploy our employees throughout the city even more efficiently which will help us to keep costs down for our clients. Basically, though…it’s time.
It’s safe to say that up until recent years this part of time was, shall we say…blighted. It was a scary part of town. It was hard to see that it could someday become a vivacious asset to the cityscape. But alas, thanks to new developments in the area it is turning out to be a very fun and energetic area. New developments by Urban Village and Harvest Development amongst others has changed this area for the better. It is a great place and we’ve found a building we can reshape into yet another valuable piece of the neighborhood and we’re excited to help turn this area around.
So, over the next few months we will begin the interior demolition and buildout of the space. It’s going to be neat and it’s going to help us grow to become an even better company. We’ll keep you updated as the project progresses.
