Property managers must show some imagination to keep a property fully rented. One way to keep an office building occupied is to consider specializing–renting to members of one professional field.
Members of the medical profession have long realized the advantages of having an office in a medical building (that is, in a building occupied only by professionals in the health care field). The building is designed, equipped, operated and maintained solely for their particular professional needs.
This concept can also work for attorneys. Many attorneys would like to be in a building that is convenient to a central area, such as county and federal court buildings. One feature that could be even more important to attorney tenants and to the owner, in keeping tenants happy, is the fully equipped law library.
The Legal Office Amenity
When a law firm initially assembles a law library, it costs thousands of dollars. It costs thousands more each year to keep it up-to-date. This expense may be the one thing that forces many attorneys to form partnerships or to share office space.
In one property, the developer created a long, enclosed room for the law library. He set aside one side of an entire floor and built in shelving to hold the books. Since the property was being developed for this purpose, the floor was given special design treatment. Floor loads for a library will be much higher than in other parts of an office building. The only furniture required for the room is worktables and chairs.
All of the tenant–attorneys in this building pay a small amount each month toward the salary of a full-time librarian who assists the attorneys with their research, handles the filing and book ordering, and takes care of the book collection.
In the building in our example, the suites filled quickly, rented to law firms only. The tenants stated that the law library was the attraction that convinced them to rent in this particular building.