SANTA BARBARA- The Spanish-style building located at 801 Garden St has now been fully leased to a mix of office tenants. Greg Bartholomew and Steve Hayes of Hayes Commercial Group were tasked by the landlord to fill the vacant building within a year. Bartholomew and Hayes procured five tenants to occupy the remodeled building and completed the assignment ahead of schedule.

The Barry Berkus-designed building was constructed in the 1980’s as a multi-tenant office building. The 24,522 square-foot building was occupied by Antioch University for about 20 years and was subsequently occupied by Sonos, Inc. Once vacant, the owner remodeled all the suites, common areas, and patio areas in order to meet current tenant requirements.

“Tenants were attracted to the building because of the modern upgrades to the suites as well as the exterior space, the subterranean parking, and appeal of being located downtown,” Bartholomew said. “These were all important factors helping us to completely re-tenant the building in a short time frame at or near our asking rents.”

The five new tenants are all existing Santa Barbara companies and represent a range of industry, from professional services to high tech, with a variety of reasons for leasing new space downtown. Integrated Insurance (Neovia) is returning to downtown Santa Barbara after a 12-year stint in Goleta. The Henderson & Borgeson law firm, Caliber Home Loans, and the Miller-McCune Center are moving from downtown offices of comparable size in order to take advantage of the freshly-remodeled suites at 801 Garden St. The high-tech firm BrightMarket (aka FastSpring) is expanding from a smaller space downtown.

“This follows a trend we’re seeing in downtown office leasing market right now,” Bartholomew said. “There’s a lot of movement and demand is high, especially for properties with on-site parking in the downtown core.”