Comcast to occupy entire new skyscraper

Comcast Corp. has decided the company will occupy its entire new building — the Comcast Innovation and Technology Center — that is under construction in Center City.

David L. Cohen, executive vice president of the Philadelphia cable company, said Comcast has expanded the amount of space it will occupy and will take all of the building's 1.28 million square feet of office space.

Cohen made the revelation at an annual commercial real estate forecast organized by the Philadelphia office of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank. He was the keynote speaker at the event held at the Union League.

Comcast's decision concerns just the office portion of the building. The 222-room Four Seasons space remains as planned.

Comcast just keeps growing

As of last July, Comcast had signed a 20-year lease on 982,275 square feet of the 59-story tower's office space. That was up from when Comcast first announced a year ago that it was going to construct the new skyscraper a year ago. It had then committed to 957,000 square feet.

"We're not ready for a third tower but when we signed the original lease, it was for 75 percent of the building and we have decided to take the remaining 25 percent," he said.

Comcast followed a similar growth trajectory when its first headquarters building, the Comcast Center, was under construction a decade ago. The company thought it would need just a portion of that 1.2-million-square-foot building but ended up filling the entire structure. More recently, it asked some tenants not affiliated with the company to leave the building so it could have additional space.

Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) has added thousands of employees in Philadelphia since 2002 when it then had about 700 people working from its headquarters in Centre Square. By 2008, it had 2,900 and this year it expects to have 5,000 employees working from its headquarters. If the merger with Time Warner goes through, it will add just a couple of hundred additional jobs in Philadelphia.

"We're out of space," Cohen said, noting the company not only has space at Comcast Center but has spilled over into Centre Square and Three Logan Square.

Many of its Philadelphia employees are not working in typical white collar jobs, Cohen said. The new tower will have 16 floors from which engineers will be working and house five research labs and incubator space. When the new tower opens, Cohen said he would wager the "average age will probably start with a 2."

The company also will not make the same mistake it did with the first tower.

"The only thing we really got wrong with the Comcast Center is bike racks," he said. Just 50 were initially installed but that got expanded to 250. In another reflection of its employee base, 80 percent take public transit to work.

Liberty Property Trust (NYSE: LPT) is the developer of the building and Comcast's joint venture partner in ownership of the building. LF Driscoll is constructing the building.

Source: Philadelphia Business Journal