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The Boyer Co. has started an extensive renovation of the former Questar office building in downtown Salt Lake City, and already has a tenant for the top two floors.
Strong & Hanni, a Salt Lake City law firm, has agreed to lease the top two floors of the eight-story building at the southwest corner of 100 South and 200 East, project manager Brent Pace said Thursday.
Boyer bought the 204,000-square-foot building in January. The company has renamed it 102 Tower, to complement a seven-story Class A office structure Boyer already is constructing on an empty lot at the southeast corner of 100 South and 200 East. That building will be called 101 Tower when it opens next May.
The common areas of 102 Tower will undergo a renovation that provides for easier foot traffic and access to the building. It will have an entrance oriented toward the intersection of 100 South and 200 East. A second entrance will be in the center of the building on the 100 South side.
Pace declined to say what Boyer will spend on the renovation, which also includes a complete makeover of the building's central atrium and construction of a five-level parking garage with nearly 600 stalls.
"It's probably fair to say millions overall, but we decline to give an exact figure. Certainly when you consider the parking structure with it, it's certainly well into the millions," he said.
The interior renovations will be completed this fall, while the parking structure is expected to be finished next spring — around the time 101 Tower opens.
Strong & Hanni will occupy 33,000 square feet of space on the seventh and eighth floors. The law firm currently has offices in the Triad Center in downtown Salt Lake City and in Sandy. Whether the firm will consolidate both locations at 102 Tower isn't clear. The firm didn't respond to a request for comment.
In April, Boyer said it had started work on 101 Tower, which will have 146,000 square feet of office space. Parr Brown Gee and Loveless, a law firm at 185 S. State St., has agreed to lease the fifth, sixth and seventh floors.
Pace said Boyer sees plenty of demand for new downtown office space. The company expects to have 102 Tower fully leased within a year, he said.
"I wouldn't say there's a shortage [of first-class office space downtown] right now," Pace said. "But part of our strategy is, there is a shortage of large blocks of empty space.
"There are many buildings with 5,000 or 10,000 square feet [of unused space]. But there are few that can offer 40,000 to 60,000 in a block," he said.
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