Successfully Redefining Office Space with Spencer Levine – RFP 53 Transcript
Spencer Levine (00:00): Office is certainly not dead. Office is going to continue to evolve, but it’s really going to be focused on what the experience is. It’s never going to go back to office as just a box.
Gordon Lamphere (00:16): Hi, I’m Gordon Lamphere, and welcome to The Real Finds Podcast, the podcast that interviews key entrepreneurs, activists, and researchers who are shaping commercial real estate and, as a result, our world. On today’s podcast, we’ll be speaking with Spencer Levine. Spencer is president of RAL Companies, a New York-based developer of residential, resort, and office properties. On the podcast, we discuss Spencer’s passion for design and for building workspaces that raise the bar for consumers and landlords alike. We dive into the specifics of improving the built environment, including the importance of amenities, floor plate diversity, and vertical circulation in attracting tenants. And we wrap up by comparing office development methods that work nationally, and how buildings Spencer has developed in New York, Miami, and many other metro areas can continue to lease up despite headwinds. If you’re interested in office and making money in this difficult environment, this podcast is a must-listen. Spencer, thanks for hopping on the podcast today.
Spencer Levine (01:25): Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me.
Growing Up on the Job Site
Gordon Lamphere (01:27): So why real estate?
Spencer Levine (01:30): I grew up in the real estate world. I’m the son of an architect, I grew up on construction sites, and I’ve always loved the built environment. Every weekend, we were on job sites and at projects, learning what we were doing. It’s a 44-year-old family-owned and operated business that we’re now running. There wasn’t much difference between family life and work life. We were always part of it, and my father made an effort to make sure of that. Growing up in it, I developed a passion for delivering spaces that people get to experience and react to. That’s actually how I became a licensed landscape architect. Both of my degrees are in landscape architecture. It was the perfect hybrid between the built environment and nature, which I’ve always enjoyed: being outside and experiencing what the world has for me.
Gordon Lamphere (02:42): Why do you think the built environment is so important?
Spencer Levine (02:45): Both the natural and the built environment play such a role in our everyday experiences, and every person experiences the built environment differently. I’ve told this story often: I love working on hotel and hospitality projects, and office projects as well, where you have a transient population using the space. Every person who comes into that space has a unique impression and a unique reaction to it. People get an immediate, visceral reaction.
Gordon Lamphere (03:34): A visceral reaction.
Spencer Levine (03:43): And you, as the designer, the developer, or the facilitator of that built environment, get the opportunity to see how people react to it. My understanding of the built environment has only grown as I’ve experienced more of these reactions and deliveries: how someone reacts when they walk into the lobby of a great office building, how people arrive, what that overall experience is.
My education also goes back to the larger scale. In landscape architecture, I really focused on the urban planning scale too. When you work on a project that’s so site-specific, like Zero Irving here in Manhattan, which we’ll talk about, you see how that building fits into the larger context. A project is just one site in a neighborhood, but the neighborhood is impacted by that project, and that impact then extends to the larger region. You really get to see that scaling, domino effect happen.
The 2024 to 2025 Office Market: Beyond the Box
Gordon Lamphere (05:00): Speaking of domino effects, one of the big ones in the post-2020 world has been across the office market. You’ve been generally pretty successful at leasing in the post-2020 market. What are you seeing in the 2024 to 2025 office market?
Spencer Levine (05:22): We’re seeing that officing is not just about creating a box anymore. What’s interesting is that even pre-COVID, we saw a trend in how officing was changing. The way people were coming to work and working was starting to change even before it was forced to change. We’re drawing on our experience from luxury residential work and hospitality, where you have to keep people’s attention and draw them to a building, making these environments somewhere people want to be and where they’re productive. A lot of those experiences from the hospitality world are coming into office.
Gordon Lamphere (06:22): What are those experiences? What draws people to a building?
Spencer Levine (06:28): I think it’s as much about the services and spaces you provide as it is about the tenant’s actual space. When we look at a project like Zero Irving, and other office projects like Link, which we’re delivering in Wynwood in Miami, it is about providing flexible spaces that can adapt to how companies grow, providing a diversity of floor plates, and having spaces that are well thought out from an engineering standpoint, whether that’s column grid, light and air, or MEP systems. You really want well-thought-out systems supporting the space.
But it also goes to the amenity level. It’s not about throwing money at a project and throwing in every amenity you can possibly fathom. It’s about finding the amenities that really have a return on investment. We’ve been putting gyms in our buildings for years, but it’s not about putting in the largest gym. It’s about putting in a gym with the right equipment and experiences, given current trends in fitness, health, and wellness. It could be a 1,500-square-foot gym, but it’s really meaningful to the people who use it, and it gets used. It’s not just a big open void.
For years, and this might tie back to my landscape architecture background, I’ve believed there’s a really relevant role for outdoor space. Being able to work in the outdoor environment benefits the overall work environment and increases productivity. It gives people an opportunity to break the rhythm and find a different kind of space. At Zero Irving, we have an amazing roof deck with really unique views both north and south. We’ve also created spaces in that outdoor environment that can foster a conversation between two people or host a company-wide gathering, whether that’s a real pep talk or a cocktail hour on the roof.
Spencer Levine (08:52): So it’s that diversity of experiences and the return on those amenities: making sure you’re choosing the amenities that make a difference in the day-to-day life of the tenants and their employees.
Why Floor Plate Diversity Matters
Gordon Lamphere (09:05): I’m going to dig back into amenities, but you mentioned something I’ve gone over again and again with the developers we work with and the tenants I’ve worked with when evaluating a building: diverse floor plates. Can you explain, for somebody who might not understand, why floor plates are so important and why floor plate diversity is a factor that’s sometimes overlooked?
Spencer Levine (09:35): Absolutely. It’s one of the initial analyses we do when we’re looking at a potential development opportunity. It’s about being able to support companies at different stages of growth, and that flexibility factor is so important in attracting good tenants to a development. Different companies have different requirements, and you want a diversity of tenants in your building. While it’s nice to lease the building 100 percent to one tenant that takes all your floors, the reality is that some diversity in the leasing schedule, and in the industries represented in the building, is really good, because it creates a more diverse experience for the other tenants.
You can get a tremendous amount of bang for your buck on smaller floor plates, which support younger-stage companies. We’ve even taken some of these smaller, more achievable floor plates and worked on different lease structures with tenants, such as a smaller security deposit or a different term, to really support early-stage companies. The larger footprints are really beneficial for larger, later-stage companies.
What we’re also finding, and where floor plate diversity really plays a role, is that even the largest companies, like some of the biggest tech companies with massive floor plates and massive office portfolios, now operate almost like a collection of small subcompanies or groups within the larger envelope. Those large companies want the flexibility to subdivide their space
Spencer Levine (11:58): into smaller operating groups, each with its own security and its own servers, basically operating as a standalone entity under the larger umbrella. So again, floor plate diversity and flexibility matter, and that comes down to column grid, mechanical systems, and how you set up the building. Column-free space is wonderful because it lets you put walls wherever you need them, or not. But even in a building with a regular column grid, you need to know how to subdivide it to provide for different opportunities.
Because we’re a fully vertically integrated real estate services company, and we actually started as an architectural firm 45 years ago, we do full feasibility and test-fit studies early on for any building we’re getting into. We look at how users might use those floor plates and how they can rationally be divided, so that going in, we can answer the questions tenants might ask. Especially in our current environment, no one knows how businesses are going to grow or contract, or which way markets are going. So having that infinite flexibility in the floor plates, a diverse tenant pool, and diverse experiences is very important to a building’s success. At Zero Irving, floor plates range from 15,000 square feet down to 10,000 square feet, across three separate setbacks in the building. So we have consistency but variety.
What Class A Tenants Want: Light, Arrival, and Vertical Circulation
Gordon Lamphere (14:10): Speaking of consistency and variety, people are consistently talking about the variety of amenities that attract top talent. Top talent can mean great tenants on the landlord side and great employees on the business side. What are you seeing your Class A tenants look for in terms of amenities?
Spencer Levine (14:46): The amenities go beyond building-wide amenities. They can also be part of the development itself. For instance, access to light and air, and natural light in particular, is a huge amenity that we don’t usually think of as an amenity. It has to be very well thought out in the initial development of any building, or in the adaptive reuse of one. So light is a big amenity. We’re also seeing a focus on the overall experience in the building: the arrival experience, the service level in the lobby, and the elevators. Vertical circulation has become a real question tenants are asking, and it’s important. When we moved offices after COVID, we actually chose our new space because of the vertical circulation in the building.
Gordon Lamphere (15:51): Can you explain vertical circulation for a tenant or potential tenant who might be listening?
Spencer Levine (16:02): Absolutely. It’s elevator access to your floor. We came from a loft-style building in SoHo. We loved it there. The loft environment goes to the heart of what RAL is about, a high-design environment. But it had a single, very small elevator serving eight floors. Then COVID hit, and there was the idea of being shoved into a four-by-four box with six or eight other people. There was also a very high-traffic tenant higher up in the building, so our access to our own office was limited by other tenants, because there was a single, low-capacity elevator. We moved to a building where we have access to four high-speed destination dispatch elevators, and it changes the whole experience.
It makes it a little more corporate. It feels like you’re arriving at an office building, and our space still speaks to our design language, which is great. We often host large project meetings where we bring all the consultants together, and participants can get in and out easily. Experiencing our office isn’t a hassle. That’s definitely relevant in a lot of our conversations with tenants and users of our buildings. It extends to hospitality, branded residential, and luxury condos too. How long are you willing to wait to get to your apartment, or to leave it? How long are you willing to wait to get to someone’s office, or your own? It plays into the overall experience of the building.
Flight to Quality at Every Level, and Seamless Access Control
The other thing that goes along with that is access control and how the elevators are set up. In this tech-based environment, people want a seamless, tech-based approach to access control. They want it because a lot of tenants, even in your B-plus
Spencer Levine (18:25): or even C-plus buildings, are part of the flight to quality. We talk about flight to quality a lot, and there’s a flight to quality within every division of the office world. The former B-minus tenant is now stretching to get into a B-plus building, and for them, that’s like an A-plus building. It’s a much better experience. Access control matters because you want to feel safe in your space and feel like you have full control of it. That seamless access control process has become a very big amenity and a big part of our planning on every project. We learned a lot about it at Zero Irving, and we’re bringing that knowledge and technology to Link in Wynwood, because it’s such an important part of the overall experience.
As I briefly mentioned with access control, in taller buildings, and even in larger-footprint buildings, destination dispatch is a big amenity question too. That’s the elevator system where you enter your floor number on a keypad while you’re waiting, and the elevator just takes you there. It takes some getting used to, but it’s really efficient. It shortens wait times and streamlines the experience of getting to someone’s office.
Gordon Lamphere (19:47): One of the most important things you just talked about is that everything is relative in the flight to quality. I worked with a tenant running a call center that was moving from what I’d almost call D space, and it was terrible, into what might be B-minus space. For them, it felt like entering the Taj Mahal. That’s the world we’re in. The human experience is relative, just like the corporate world.
The Concept Behind Zero Irving
What I find really interesting is that, relative to all your competition, you’ve been very successful leasing Zero Irving. For somebody out there who’s either a developer or on the user end, what was the real concept behind it? There are very few people who recently sat back and said, “I’m going to develop, build, and lease a successful office building.” What’s the concept?
Spencer Levine (20:53): I appreciate that. For a long time, we’ve focused on public-private development. We believe there are great properties owned by local, regional, and federal governments that could be repurposed or become something great that benefits both the public and the private side. With Zero Irving, we felt strongly that we could deliver a project that did well and did good at the same time.
It started with an RFP in late 2015 that we responded to and worked through in early 2016. It was an amorphous, very grandiose idea of creating something that would benefit 21st-century jobs, and they left it very open. We quickly put together a team of the best in class at delivering comprehensive public-private developments. The underlying concept was a vertically integrated ecosystem where every use in the building was highly programmed to benefit the other uses.
Starting at the ground level, we have a food hall that activates the neighborhood. I spoke earlier about the impact of a single site on a neighborhood and then on the region. Zero Irving is on 14th Street between Third and Fourth Avenues, at the terminus of Irving Place. It was an awkward stretch of 14th Street between two very active areas: Union Square to the west and Third Avenue to the east. That stretch was kind of weird. So the first thing was to activate it and change the urban experience along the sidewalk. We did that with the food hall, and by creating a node of activity where all of the building’s uses come together at a single point, where Irving Place dead-ends into
Spencer Levine (23:12): the building, hence the name Zero Irving. It’s the starting point of Irving Place: zero. We created that hub of activity by locating the entrance to the food hall, the entrance to what is now the Civic Hall digital skills and workforce development center, and the main lobby of Zero Irving all at that point.
Every Industry Is a Tech Industry: The Civic Hall Model
As you work up the building, above the food hall, we wanted to deliver on the promise of being a support system for 21st-century jobs. What we learned throughout the process is that every industry is a tech industry now. You can tack “tech” onto the end of anything: construction tech, fintech. Everything is tech. So what made the most sense was to develop, with a great partner, a center of excellence for digital skills training and workforce development, a place where people can come to gain the skills that prepare them to advance, since the entire economy now runs on technology. We did that with Civic Hall, which is part of Fedcap, and Fedcap has been a great partner throughout.
What we discovered is that there are digital skills training providers all across New York City, but they’re often relegated to the outer boroughs, as far from the center of the city as possible. That’s not where the people who need them most are working or living, but those providers couldn’t afford to be in the center of the city in a place like Union Square. Civic Hall brought these best-in-class training organizations together in a single facility, where they license space from Civic Hall and Fedcap instead of leasing it. They share technology, equipment, the improvements to the space and classrooms, and even pedagogy.
Spencer Levine (25:33): That hasn’t happened before. It allows organizations that are typically forced to the outer boroughs by cost to come into the center, because they’re now sharing the burden of those costs and can deploy their programs. Civic Hall has partnerships with LaGuardia Community College and a host of other programs that now host their certification programs at Zero Irving.
What this does is create a pipeline of skilled professionals into the rest of the building. We envisioned it from the start, and it sounded utopian at the time, but it’s cool to see it actually happen. We envisioned the Class A tenants upstairs hiring from this dedicated pipeline of trained individuals. As Civic Hall defines its programming, whether that’s cybersecurity or a certain kind of AI and data analytics, people are being trained specifically for the support jobs required upstairs. Several tenants in the Class A office block, which runs from floors eight through twenty-one, are hiring from Civic Hall. The ecosystem is actually working, and everyone benefits from each other’s existence, which is really cool.
Designed for Flexibility, Ready for COVID
You asked how we were successful. We were forward-thinking in our overall planning. Obviously, no one knew COVID was coming in 2016 and 2017 when we were going through the rezoning and the ULURP process here in New York. But we’ve always prided ourselves on focusing on the design and engineering of a space and providing for long-term flexibility, in both engineering and design. I like to think the decisions we made were really well thought out, though some might call a few of them luck. Before COVID, we already had a touchless experience to get into the building: touchless revolving doors and a digitally integrated, touchless turnstile system at Zero Irving.
Spencer Levine (27:54): We had destination dispatch that could be controlled from that touchless turnstile system. So in the 2021 and 2022 timeframe, when COVID was still very much on everyone’s minds and people were looking for spaces they didn’t have to touch, we were providing that.
We also made decisions around flexibility, because we knew officing was evolving and traditional work hours weren’t necessarily nine to five anymore. When you lease an office, you read through the lease and always get to the part about after-hours charges on the MEP systems. We didn’t want our tenants to get to that part and struggle, and we didn’t want to have those discussions. We want people to work when they want to work, and to have comfortable access to their offices when they’re feeling creative or want to produce. So we decided to go with a floor-by-floor VRF system, with no mixing of anyone’s air. That turned out to be a brilliant decision in the post-COVID environment, when people didn’t want to deal with other people’s MEP systems or the mixing of air and water. We did it for flexibility and the ability to occupy your own space, but it also turned out to be really beneficial in a post-COVID world.
We talked about the outdoor space and the amenities. All of these things, including the food hall, the digital skills training center, and the amenities and systems we designed in, created the perfect post-COVID package. I’d be lying if I said there weren’t restless nights while we were building through COVID. We all struggled with what officing was going to be. Were we making the right decision? Should we be pivoting?
Spencer Levine (30:08): What are we doing here? No one knew if they were ever going back to an office again. We were building a food hall at a time when no one knew if anyone would want to eat next to anyone ever again. But we had conviction. We knew the product we were delivering was so far superior to the existing bar that if we got it in front of the right people and presented the product and the program the right way, people would understand what we were trying to deliver. And the flight to quality was certainly apparent.
Winning and Delivering Public-Private Partnerships
Gordon Lamphere (30:45): Speaking of getting in front of the right people, one of the big things I hear from developers is: how do you get in front of the right people in economic development and municipal government, and how do you develop that public-private partnership? We routinely hear that’s a major industry struggle.
Spencer Levine (31:13): We’re very fortunate to have built the reputation we have over the last 45 years. We have never retraded a deal. We have always delivered on time and on budget for our partners, for our municipal partners, for governments around the country, and for ourselves. Reputation plays a really large role in how these public-private developments happen. We talk a big game, but we also act a big game, and we deliver. Maybe it’s because we’re a family-owned and operated company, our name is on the line, and our reputation is very important to us.
Beyond that, it’s finding the right public-private opportunities and putting together the right program. Zero Irving was a highly publicized RFP, and some of the biggest developers in New York City pursued it. I mentioned the idea of a project doing well and doing good. It took me a long time to find the words for that, and I probably borrowed the phrase from someone. It’s very important to us that our projects don’t just do well, but also deliver something beyond the monetary return.
Zero Irving is a perfect example, with its full ecosystem and digital skills training. Look at our Pier 6 project in Brooklyn Bridge Park as well. At Quay Tower, I think we’re now over 90 percent sold on the condos. It was accompanied by The Landing, a mixed-income rental building that we actually subsidized through the construction of the condominiums. At the time, it was a reverse 70-30: 70 percent affordable and 30 percent market rate. We delivered it in a package where no one would ever know it was an affordable building, because we believe in high design and making the right design decisions,
Spencer Levine (33:36): not throwing money at them, just very thoughtful design. That’s apparent in all of our project types. We delivered very successful mixed-income housing, subsidized by the condos, as a single two-building project that brought much-needed affordable housing to the Brooklyn Heights waterfront, which had never been done before, while also doing well as a luxury condominium. We really put our cards on the table on that one, in an environment where all of the project’s payments had to support Brooklyn Bridge Park, because the park couldn’t draw from the city’s general fund.
So how do we pull all these different levers to deliver something with public benefit and a really good program that does good, while also doing well financially, making money, and satisfying our partners and lenders? The creativity that goes into putting together that program and business plan is a major tool in successfully winning these projects and then successfully executing them.
We’ve also had projects where we reversed into a public-private partnership. At One Brooklyn Bridge Park, 360 Furman Street, we bought the building on the open market and actually contributed it to Brooklyn Bridge Park in exchange for ongoing ground lease and PILOT payments, and those payments go to support the park. We were able to get some zoning benefits, as well as the benefit of being adjacent to the park and what that meant for the project. So we’ve gone both directions. We’ve been brought
Spencer Levine (36:02): into public-private developments, and we’ve also brought public-private developments to governments. Again, surety of delivery, never retrading, and delivering what you promise is key.
Designing for the Visceral Reaction
Gordon Lamphere (36:16): Speaking of delivering, there’s a lot of commonality between some of your New York developments and one of the groups I work with here. There’s a development of the year I can actually look out at, and they did all sorts of earthwork they didn’t necessarily need to do to create rolling hills, which aren’t typical in Illinois, by the way, to give the idea of being located within a shire, because it’s in Lincolnshire. Why is consumer primacy, developing these very tactile spaces that spark a visceral, emotional reaction, important for you? Is there a certain tenant you’re targeting, or do you think consumer primacy is important for every project?
Spencer Levine (37:19): Every project is its own project. I know that sounds silly to say out loud.
Gordon Lamphere (37:27): No, it doesn’t.
Spencer Levine (37:28): But the design really is specific to what you’re trying to achieve on any given project. Zero Irving had a very tech-focused concept behind it. We knew we wanted to deliver the digital skills training and workforce development center,
Spencer Levine (37:47): and tech was the underlying design ethos. So the building is very techy. There are things you wouldn’t know unless you sat and spoke with us and the architect for a long time, like punched panels reminiscent of old IBM punch cards. The design has a lot of layers, and as you peel them back, you start to understand what we were trying to achieve. There’s something new every time you experience the space.
In our residential and hospitality projects, we believe timeless design is important. Markets are a roller coaster, so you may not sell out everything in the next couple of months. You may have a longer absorption, and we don’t want to be redesigning or rebuilding apartments or experiences to move units. We want to design spaces that are universally appreciated, where the quality of our materials and design can’t be debated. You might not like certain aspects, but overall it’s a great design and a great delivery.
We don’t want people moving into our buildings expecting to rip out the kitchens or bathrooms on day one. We can go back to buildings we delivered over the last 25 years, and people still have the original finishes, because they were timeless and designed to be appreciated over the long term. They’re durable, well-chosen materials for the specific use. All of that goes into creating the experience and the draw. We don’t believe in doing what everyone else is doing, or in delivering the same cookie-cutter development. Each project becomes a passion project for us, and each has its own merits we need to focus on: how the market will accept it, what’s in demand, and what may benefit
Spencer Levine (40:11): a certain city over the long haul. So that tactile experience and the reception of the product are so important to our success. It’s not the same product or the same floor plan you see everywhere. It’s very specific to the site.
New York vs. Miami, and Why Wynwood
Gordon Lamphere (40:32): You’ve done most of your developments in New York, and now you’re moving into the Miami market. New York and Miami are two of our larger listener groups, along with LA, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, and the Triangle. What do you find is the biggest difference between the Miami and New York markets?
Spencer Levine (41:00): It’s interesting that you picked up on the New York work and the Miami work. I’d say we’ve been everywhere in between along the way, and we have interesting projects across the country now. We’re based in New York, we have offices in Miami and Denver, I have a team in Houston, and we do a decent amount of work in the Caribbean. We like the diversity of experiences. It makes everything richer, because we can draw on the different offices, bring their input on problem solving and specific design issues to the broader group, and carry those solutions across the country.
There are a lot of comparables between New York and Miami. We traditionally haven’t focused on Florida. We didn’t follow the herd down there in the post-COVID world, and over the years we haven’t really done ground-up development in Florida. To be totally candid, we’ve been very restrained and focused on areas we were more interested in. We’ve done a great deal of work in Telluride, Colorado. We’ve done about 220 acres of development in Colorado Springs, and we’re currently developing a great project in Steamboat Springs. So the Mountain West is very familiar to us as well. What drew us to Miami this time, with Link, is that Wynwood is special.
Gordon Lamphere (42:47): For anyone who hasn’t been there, it’s a very unique development area. Go ahead.
Spencer Levine (42:54): I appreciate that. Going back to our concept that we’re not going to go everywhere or do the same thing everyone else is doing, what we found in Wynwood was a very unique, culturally based neighborhood that really reminded us of what the Meatpacking District was 10 or 15 years ago. It has an arts and design appreciation you don’t find everywhere. When our partners brought the two sites that make up Link to our attention, we found an amazing opportunity in an amazing neighborhood. They were two focal-point properties that created a true gateway from the west into Wynwood.
We could design the first campus-style office development in an urban setting, taking advantage of the urban fabric that weaves in and out of the development through both interior and exterior spaces. We could work at a scale we thought was appropriate for the neighborhood and deliver, like we talked about earlier, diversity of floor plates and complexity of design. On programming, we’re working with many of the same tenants, and even training organizations, to bring the Zero Irving programming there. We keep calling it taking it on the road. The underlying concepts behind Zero Irving are applicable across the country. It wasn’t magic. It was just putting together the right program for a site that took advantage of its location, like Link does in Miami, and created a draw for the people, participants, and tenants who will use that programming. I think there’s still runway in Miami, especially in Wynwood.
Spencer Levine (45:17): There’s a lot of discussion about how these neighborhoods will grow under the Live Local Act and some of the other planning agendas coming into play. But Wynwood in particular is really interesting because it isn’t built on the beach experience. It doesn’t require any of the typical Miami forces to be what it is. It’s a great, culturally based neighborhood that’s becoming a 24-hour community, with the amount of residential coming online as well as the office space and the great nightlife. It has all of the underpinnings we saw here in the Meatpacking District, Chelsea, and beyond.
The Future of Office: Truly Mixed Use and the Return of Personal Space
Gordon Lamphere (46:07): I remember going down to Miami and seeing Wynwood when development was just starting. I was with a friend of ours, who has since passed, who was an incredibly successful developer in the Chicago area, and we both said, “This is either going to be the world’s biggest flop or an absolute home run.” We know which direction that went. Looking toward the future of the industry, there are certainly things that could be flops or home runs, but we find that individuals in the arena have a much better idea of where things are going. Spencer, where do you see office, and the industry in general, going?
Spencer Levine (47:01): I think office is going to continue to evolve, but it’s really going to be focused on the experience. It’s never going to go back to office as just a box. I think development as a whole will continue to become more and more diverse in how it’s executed. Mixed use is going to become truly mixed use. It won’t mean retail on the ground floor, some office above, and maybe some parking. Those uses will continue to blend further, and how spaces are used will continue to evolve and blend.
Office is certainly not dead, in my opinion. I spend a lot of time here in New York and in other cities around the country, and work from home has a shelf life. Sure, it’s nice one day a week to work in a room where no one’s jumping in and bothering you, but the complexity and creativity of the work being produced aren’t there in a work-from-home environment. There are certainly jobs that can be done on your own at home, but many more jobs really benefit from collaboration and from how those spaces work.
Another thing we’re seeing evolve is further refinement of the move toward the open office. Hot desks are nice, but people also like having their own space and knowing they’re coming in to occupy it over and over. I think there will be a smaller shift within the evolving office market back toward some personal space. The open office is great for collaboration, but it’s also a hindrance given how much time we all spend on our phones, talking and making noise. So I think some hybrid design style will come out of the evolution of our office spaces. But certainly the office
Spencer Levine (49:27): development world is not dead, and office is not dead. There are great opportunities across this country to create great spaces for people to deliver creative work and keep progressing.
Advice for Young Professionals: Listen and Learn From the Experts Around You
Gordon Lamphere (49:42): One of the things we love to talk about is the progress we’ve made in our own lives. We have a lot of younger listeners, so let’s step back in time to young Spencer. What’s one minute of quick advice on how you’d handle starting your career?
Spencer Levine (50:07): I had the unique opportunity to get involved in the family business early, coming out of grad school in 2005, before the economic collapse. I came into a bustling development world. At the time, I was submitting my portfolio to landscape architecture studios, and I had to evaluate. I had the opportunity to join the company, work my way up, and be involved in projects that it would have taken years to reach at that level if I’d gone the straight landscape architecture route. I chose to join RAL, and it was the best decision I made.
What I’ve learned over the years is to put yourself in experiences and opportunities where you can just listen. There’s nothing wrong with listening, taking notes, whether written or mental, and learning as much as you can from the people around you. You don’t always have to be the voice in the room. That’s something I learned over time. You don’t know everything, and a lot of people know a lot more than you. Take advantage of the experts around you. Ask questions when it’s the right time and environment, and really take it all in. That’s the best advice I can give myself and others. I still try to live by it today and benefit from the people around me, who are experts in everything they do. And I hope people benefit from me as well, and that I bring knowledge to others. But that’s probably the best piece of advice I can give.
Who Should Be Our Next Guest? Start Local
Gordon Lamphere (52:14): The last question we have for you is the whole point of the podcast. We believe the men and women in the arena know who we should reach out to next. If you could recommend at least one person, and we won’t let you off the hook on this one, who should it be?
Spencer Levine (52:36): In the world of real estate, if you could reach out to one person, I believe in starting local. There are real benefits to understanding your local planning, or the planning in the place you think you want to end up, and understanding the growth patterns and what government thinks is going to happen. If you’re looking to build a career, my own landscape architecture career actually started because a local park commissioner in a small park district on Long Island overheard me talking about landscape architecture with the person cutting my hair. She said, “We’re looking for a landscape architecture intern. Would you help us out?” I ended up getting a whole bunch of work from them early in my career.
So my recommendation is to start small and find someone local, whether that’s someone in the planning department, an elected official in local government, or even a stakeholder in a project you’ve heard of or believe in. That’s a great first call to make. It doesn’t mean you’re focusing on that project. You’re trying to learn how that person got involved, what they believe the trends are, and what local government is looking to do. That’s a really good place to start. Sure, there are amazing visionaries in the real estate world, but they’re so broad-based. You can talk to brokers, developers, and operators, but on the ground, there’s a lot to be said for starting local and dealing with that very tangible progress and what you can do.
How to Reach Spencer Levine
Gordon Lamphere (54:48): We have a couple of people from economic development in Greater Chicagoland and Illinois coming on toward the end of the year. One last question before we end: if somebody wants to reach out to you, what’s the best way to get in contact?
Spencer Levine (55:09): The best way to get in touch with me is probably email. I see all my emails, and I address them as I get them, or at least daily. My email address is [email protected].
Gordon Lamphere (55:38): Spencer, thank you so much for hopping on the podcast today. We have to have you on again in the future.
Spencer Levine (55:42): I’d love that.
Gordon Lamphere (55:44): Thanks again to Spencer. We appreciate his insights. If you enjoyed the podcast, please give us a like, a five-star rating, and a review. Your comments, interactions, and subscriptions truly matter and help us continue to bring on quality guests. You can find us on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. I’m Gordon Lamphere with The Real Finds Podcast. Thank you for listening.
Van Vlissingen and Co. has been the Midwest’s oldest commercial real estate brokerage, development, and management firm since 1879, and today is independently ranked the #1 commercial real estate agency in Chicagoland, home to the #1 independently ranked agent, Gordon Lamphere, and the region’s #1 ranked commercial property management team. If you own, manage, or invest in energy-adjacent, mixed-use, or transit-oriented property across Lake County, the North Shore, the Northwest and O’Hare corridors, DuPage and the I-88 corridor, Will County, or southern Wisconsin’s Pleasant Prairie, Kenosha, and Racine markets, contact Van Vlissingen and Co. at 📞 847-634-2300 or 🌐 vvco.com. For a market-wide view of where these dynamics sit today, see our State of the Chicagoland Commercial Real Estate Market for Q3 2026.