Farella Braun + Martel relocated its San Francisco office to One Bush Plaza. Photo: Garry Belinsky/IA Interior Architects

Farella Braun + Martel's bet on hoteling has paid off with a significant uptick in office attendance, according to firm leaders. That's a good thing for Farella managing partner Brian Donnelly. "I jokingly said over the last couple of years—as we got our partners gradually used to the concept that they're not going to have their own office space—that we're either going to be looking like we were visionary, or I'll be out of a job as managing partner," Donnelly said. Last year, the Northern California midsize firm announced that it would forgo assigned offices for an app-enabled reservation system, complete with digital name plates, when relocating its San Francisco space. In April, Farella moved from 15 floors and 125,000 square feet in the Russ Building to two floors at One Bush Plaza spanning 39,935 square feet. The firm, which also has a North Bay outpost in St. Helena, California, entered into a 10-plus-year lease. Spreading team members across more than a dozen floors with widely divergent sizes and styles of individual offices led to isolation, inhibiting connectivity, according to Farella real estate partner Tony Ratner, who led the committee that spearheaded the move. When the pandemic shook up expectations of in-office work, it became clear that even if a decent number of people were in the office, they wouldn't see that many people, he said. With the firm's new space, the offices have glass facades and the floors are connected by an internal stairwell. "You can see who's there," Ratner said. "There's a lot more collaboration spaces, instead of creating big corner offices that are set aside for top partners. … You don't have to take an elevator and go to the separate floor to go get your coffee." Ratner said he expected more resistance to hoteling in largely uniformly sized and styled offices, but that's not what happened. In fact, the firm has essentially doubled its office attendance from the same period a year ago without any mandated policies, according to Ratner. "It's been very successful," he said. "It has energized people to return to the office. … People just want to come in more because they see people more." For Donnelly, the new space has made checking in with partners, associates and staff much easier. "I make a habit of it a few times a day of just walking around popping my head and saying hello to different people, seeing how they're doing," he said. When it comes to designing an office for hoteling, the key is ergonomics, according to Ratner, since work setups wouldn't be customized to individual needs. "We spent an enormous amount of time looking at that and settling on a workstation design that would have maximum flexibility," he said. The firm opted for standing desks with the highest range possible and chose a single extrawide monitor, instead of double monitors, because it's "easier to get out of the way if somebody's sitting there and you want to talk to them," Ratner said. The firm also had team members vote on the desk chairs that worked for most people. A 25-person space committee representative of various firm constituents helped steer the move. Once the options were narrowed down to three possible buildings, the committee toured each one. Aesthetically, the group worked with Interior Architects and Principal Builders to carry over the soft tones from the Russ Building. The group sought a more cozy design, with brown and green colors and wood details, instead of steel and marble, Ratner said. The committee also hosted presentations on the design choices. "You had everybody feeling invested in this," he said. "So everybody was kept informed as we went along, instead of just saying, 'Well, this is what we decided.'" Although the firm has seen increased attendance at its San Francisco office, Donnelly said he'd love to see more vibrancy in the city after the pandemic. "I've been to a whole bunch of meetings with managing partners from all over the country, and the reality is there are a handful of cities—where just by the nature of how it's situated, the commute time and other factors—that make it very difficult to get people to come back in on a consistent basis, and San Francisco is certainly in that category," he said. However, Donnelly said he has seen more people coming into the city regularly in the last couple months. "It's taken a while to come back," he said. "I'm still optimistic that it will come back, but I think San Francisco does have to reinvent itself in certain ways."