650 Main is now 62% occupied after gas company rents 49K square feet
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One of Salt Lake City’s newest office buildings has a 38 percent vacancy as brokers work to fill the 335,000-square-foot building known as 650 Main, with a Fortune 500 company signing a new lease last week.
Patrinely, the building’s owner, announced last week that it had signed the natural gas company Williams Companies to fill just under 49,000 square feet.
A Williams representative said the company plans to fill the space with employees from its own business and another pipeline business it acquired earlier this year.
“We are excited to bring together in a common space our Williams and legacy MountainWest employees as we continue the successful integration of our business,” said Candyce Fly Lee, vice president and general manager of the company’s Mountainwest and Gulf of Mexico business.
“Our employees are very deserving of this beautiful building and I’m confident that it will help foster a culture of collaboration and [camaraderie] as we execute our strategy to deliver clean energy to growing western markets,” she added in the statement.
Williams owns about 2,000 miles of gas pipelines, primarily in Utah, Wyoming and Colorado.
It’s not clear how many employees will be located at the building on the southwest corner of 600 S. Main, immediately adjacent to a new Trax station.
MountainWest reported having between 200 and 500 employees earlier this year.
The lease was handled by CBRE, which is a Building Salt Lake advertiser.
650 Main, a speculative office building finished in May 2022, now has 125,000 square feet of leasable space. The groups are working to fill the building at a critical time for the office sector.
Office vacancy rates have been soaring nationwide, and the Salt Lake metro is no exception.
Salt Lake’s office vacancy rate rose to a record-high 21.8 percent in the first quarter, according to CBRE. Class A buildings with modern amenities that employees are looking for are typically faring much better than older, more dated buildings, CBRE data show.
That vacancy rate is actually significantly lower than markets like San Francisco, where a third of all office space is sitting empty. Nationally, the office vacancy rate is 17.8 percent.
Still, Salt Lake City’s Downtown area has recovered more than any other city, according to data released by the University of Toronto School of Cities. Each major new lease-up near Downtown will only help with that.
“Williams’ commitment to 650 Main reaffirms our belief that we have a building that fulfills the expectations of today’s office users,” said Dennis Tarro, principal of Patrinely. “We are incredibly proud of their tenancy and the leasing momentum we’ve experienced this year and look forward to adding to our high-caliber tenant mix.”
Editor’s note: This story was updated to reflect that Williams Companies exclusively handles natural gas, rather than oil. Oil and gas are both fossil fuels that are contributing to climate change, but they are different and should be described correctly.
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