Go inside Thousand & One, Water Street Tampa's first office tower
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Jul 22, 2021

Thousand & One fulfills a promise that the developer of Water Street Tampa made early on in the district's life cycle — well before the district had a name or even a master plan.

The 20-story tower at 1001 Water St. is downtown Tampa's first speculative, multitenant, high-rise office building in more than a quarter-century. Strategic Property Partners, the developer of Water Street, is controlled by Tampa Bay Lightning owner Jeff Vinik and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates' Cascade Investment LLC.

In 2014, when Vinik's executives first revealed that Cascade had partnered with Vinik on the project, they promised that the nascent development — then a sea of moribund gravel lots surrounding Amalie Arena — would include the ultra-modern, luxury office space necessary for attracting high-wage jobs.

Thousand & One is exactly that, between its penthouse amenity deck, lushly landscaped outdoor terraces and Mitsubishi elevators that travel 700 feet per minute. While the new jobs are yet to materialize, the SPP executive charged with leasing the tower is as confident as ever.

Dave Bevirt, SPP's executive vice president of corporate leasing and strategy, says he's 30 days away from landing a major deal, and his team is in active negotiations for more than 100,000 square feet within Thousand & One. (The tower is 375,000 square feet, though that figure includes a second-floor fitness center and an amenity suite and rooftop terrace on the 20th floor. An entire 21,000-square-foot floor is devoted to speculative suites as small as 2,200 square feet.)

In the early days of marketing the tower for lease, the vast majority of prospects were local companies, Bevirt said. But in recent months, more potential Water Street tenants are coming from California, the Northeast and Midwest.

"In the last 60 days, in working with our EDC [the Tampa Bay Economic Development Council], we've had quite a few large-scale tenants looking at us," Bevirt said.

Many of those prospects, he said, are looking at multiple cities in Florida and throughout the Sunbelt.

"We're a catalyst for growth here in Tampa," he said.

SPP on Wednesday toured media through the tower and declared it open, though the first tenants won't take occupancy until September. It is the fourth building in Water Street's first phase to open, following Sparkman Wharf, the JW Marriott and apartment tower Heron. Every building in Water Street's first phase will be open by the second quarter of 2022, Bevirt says, and he expects all of the retail in the first phase will have commitments in place within the same time frame.

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The world was a different place when Thousand & One broke ground in July 2019, eight months before the novel coronavirus pandemic sentenced office-based employees to more than a year of working from home.

But even as more companies shift to a hybrid model that splits time between a traditional office and remote work, Water Street and Thousand & One are seeing an influx of interest from decision-makers drawn to Florida by the lack of state income tax and Covid regulations.

Water Street's WELL Certification, which SPP first touted in 2015, seems prescient in a post-Covid world. WELL Certification is similar in nature to LEED Certification, though WELL's criteria include metrics in the following categories: air, water, nourishment, light, fitness, comfort and mind. (While Thousand & One and every building within Water Street has or will seek WELL Certification, individual office tenants are not required to build out their spaces to WELL specifications.)

At Thousand & One, the WELL Certification comes to life as a highly amenitized, modern office tower, from fast-casual restaurant Naked Farmer in the street-level retail space to a full-floor fitness center that includes weight and cardio equipment and two Peloton bikes. Natural light pours in through floor-to-ceiling windows; SPP, as the master developer of more than 9 million square feet of commercial space, has carefully protected view corridors from every building.

Between Thousand & One and the University of South Florida's Morsani College of Medicine is a pocket park that SPP markets as an outdoor meeting area for office tenants.

There's seating, heat absorbent pavers and sunken "rain gardens" to collect runoff and ease the pressure on city infrastructure. The office tower itself provides shade from the scorching Florida sun. Shade is a priority at Water Street; SPP sourced 500 mature oak trees from throughout Florida to provide an immediate sense of pedestrian scale and encourage walkability.

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Before the novel coronavirus pandemic, available office space in downtown Tampa was at an all-time low. Vacancies were down, rents were up, and the market was starved for new space.

Post-Covid, there's a plethora of sublease space available. Sublease availability accounted for 20 percent of all vacant, top-tier office space in Tampa at the end of the second quarter, according to data from CBRE Group Inc.

But space available for sublease — much of it in office towers 25 to 30 years old — isn't competitive to a brand-new, trophy office tower. There's still a glaring need for brand-new office space in the urban core if Heights Union is any indication. That building, an office development in the Armature Works-anchored Heights district, is fully leased after landing a 105,000-square-foot deal with Pfizer Inc.

Thousand & One's average asking gross rent is in the low $50s per square foot. That's well above most existing buildings in downtown Tampa, where the average asking gross rent for top-tier space is just over $37 per square foot. Bevirt said SPP is offering concession packages consistent with other landlords in the market, including tenant improvement packages and free rent.

The walkable nature of Water Street, even compared to the existing CBD, is what sets it apart, Bevirt says. The entirety of the district, from three hotels to GreenWise Market to a bevy of forthcoming restaurants and retailers, represents one giant amenity package. To further sweeten the pot for potential office tenants, SPP is setting aside 100 apartments, or roughly 20 percent of the units in 1050 Water St., for corporate housing.

"We're delivering something new and unique to the market," he said. "The first reaction for years when you told folks our rents was, 'What do you mean?' Now, the market appreciates it because there's a flight to quality."

When potential tenants tour Thousand & One, human resources plays a lead role in the conversation and decision making, Bevirt said. He's long marketed Water Street's office space as a recruitment and retention play. Amid what he calls a "war for talent," his spiel is more relevant now than ever.

"HR is really the one when we meet with these out-of-town big companies — it's the head of HR who's coming," he said, "because they want to understand what [Water Street] means to their ability to recruit the talent and to secure that talent for the long term."