New tenant sought for Autodesk’s former Marin County HQ

Autodesk officially exited Marin County in October, 40 years after the design software giant got its start there.

And now the 130,000-square-foot former headquarters building at 111 McInnis Parkway in San Rafael is on the market to get only its second tenant since it was built in the mid-1990s.

“It’s a corporate campus environment built for a single tenant,” said Jordan Lazor, part of the JLL team working with property owner and original developer JHS Holdings to find a new occupant.

The space is larger than the typical Marin County office tenant, Lazor said.

Of the 47 new Marin leases brokerage Newmark tracked in the third quarter, only one was over 5,000 square feet, and that was to for a nonprofit at the south end of the county. But the market has seen larger medical office deals, such as a 35,000-square-foot new veterinary hospital in north San Rafael.

So the building could be divided for multiple tenants by floor (30,000–40,000 square feet each) or as small as 20,000 square feet, Lazor said. But as the company’s lease at 111 McInnis technically runs through the end of 2024, there’s time to find the right fit for a company looking at suburban Bay Area markets to resettle, Lazor said.

While Marin County’s unemployment rate was among California’s lowest, at 2.4% for the third quarter, the county’s office market continues to recover from high vacancy that lingered after the Great Recession and ticked up in pandemic.

For the third quarter, Newmark’s local office figured office vacancy to be 18.4% of 7.5 million square feet of space available for lease. That was down 10 basis points from second quarter and a full percentage point from a year before.

But Marin’s availability rate — a measure of what is is under lease but open for different tenancy — ticked up to nearly 22% because of 111 McInnis, and went up to almost 29% for the north San Rafael submarket where it’s located, according to Newmark.

And quarterly net absorption of Marin office space — a metric for how much more space came off the market than went on — went 45,000 square feet into positive territory last quarter. The brokerage called that a “promising” and “encouraging” sign. Net absorption for the first nine months was just 77,000 square feet.

The three-story 111 McInnis building has a full fitness facility, yoga studio, showers, lockers, outdoor work areas and a full-service commercial kitchen and cafeteria. The surrounding parking lot has 440 spaces and electric-vehicle chargers.

Autodesk moved its corporate address to San Francisco in May, following a years-long shift of top staff to the city. The company left behind office furniture, including workstations, that could speed a move-in for a subsequent tenant, Lazor said.

The JLL team on the 111 McInnis property includes Glen Dowling, Laura Duffy and Jak Churton.

Other former Autodesk office space in San Rafael is at Civic Center Plaza (3900 and 3950 Civic Center Drive in San Rafael) are being marketed by Trevor Buck and Brian Foster of Cushman & Wakefield.

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