Cresa opens office in Rochester
This article appeared originally on Albany Business Review.
Cresa Albany has expanded west with an office in Rochester to exclusively represent office and industrial tenants and owner-occupants in commercial real estate deals.
The new office will also support Cresa's clients in Buffalo, Binghamton, Syracuse and Utica as the firm continues to grow its portfolio.
Zac Conley, managing principal of the offices in Albany and Rochester, cited three factors in the demand for its brokerage services upstate:
- A large population of college graduates
- Lower cost of living compared to the New York City metro area
- The move toward a "work-from-anywhere" employment model by large corporations during the pandemic.
The office market in Rochester is more corporate-focused than in Albany, which is more government- and education-based, but Conley said there are similarities.
"There's a lot of startups coming out of RIT right now and other universities," Conley said. "There's more opportunities because more corporations are working remote. We're seeing a lot of employers hire in clusters. For example, 3M might hire eight to 10 people in Rochester. They are working remote but that doesn't mean they don't need some form of office space."
Large, national companies want to provide employees with a balance between remote and in-office options, which is forcing them to rethink their leasing plans.
"Just like in Albany, all companies are questioning their office space and reinventing their office space and we're helping them to do that," Conley said. "I think there will be a lot of movement."
The Rochester office at 350 East Ave. is overseen by senior advisers Benjamin Kirnie and Chris Lindner, who recently joined Cresa from the Rochester office of Pyramid Brokerage Co., a Cushman & Wakefield affiliate.
They're supported by Jodi Emmons, the workplace designer at Cresa Albany.