Shifting from Amenity Arms Race to Asset Activation

Stories, insights, and tools to help commercial real estate owners unlock value in every square foot.

🚀 Shifting from Amenity Arms Race to Asset Activation

The current office market rebound is defined by the "flight to quality," where top-tier buildings are capturing nearly all tenant demand.

However, succeeding today shouldn't be about winning an expensive amenity arms race; it should be about strategic asset activation – transforming amenities into value. Class A office rents are now 84% higher than those of Class B/C properties, proving tenant willingness to pay for quality and amenities (CoreCast).

The core challenge for owners and investors is moving past low-impact, high-cost "vanity amenities" to embrace services that deliver high utility, enhance NOI, and directly contribute to tenant retention. According to JLL, replacing a single tenant involves expenses that can be nearly three times higher than the cost of retaining an existing tenant (JLL). That's all the more reason to be proactive about building amenitization, even in a rebounding environment.

🛑 The Problem: The Amenity Arms Race & Unoptimized Capital

Many traditional amenities require massive capex and fail to generate returns necessary to justify their cost and space allocation. This is where capital is spent defensively, not strategically:

• Oversized fitness or game centers: While they look great on a brochure, they represent a high upfront capex and a perpetual opex burden for cleaning and maintenance. They often occupy prime, valuable square footage but suffer from low daily utilization, making them a poor investment for the full tenant base.
• Under-equipped or poorly maintained meeting rooms: In contrast to strategic, well-managed conference centers which are highly utilized and often profitable, under-equipped or poorly maintained meeting rooms signal a lack of strategic investment in core business functions. These spaces are often characterized by unreliable technology, inadequate acoustics, and stale design, creating an operational drag that actively hinders tenant productivity, frustrates employees, and detracts from the professional execution of crucial client meetings. This infrastructure represents a negative return on valuable square footage.
• The fluffy perk: Features like an in-building golf simulator target leisure and create a fleeting "wow" moment on a tour. They are not essential to the tenant's daily business operations and fail to drive sustained, measurable satisfaction.

The pursuit of these features is a distraction from true asset activation.

🎯 The Opportunity: Activating Utility Over Aesthetics

If the goal is maximizing asset value, investments must focus on high-utility services that solve core operational headaches for tenants. This is supported by objective data.

A Cushman & Wakefield Experience Per Square Foot (XSF) survey (link) highlights a major insight that redefines "essential amenity":

Free snacks and beverages, personal care services, childcare, bike storage, car services, and personal storage ranked as a more desirable amenity than coworking space.

🤯 This surprising finding confirms a powerful truth: tenants prioritize functional convenience over flexible social space. In the Stuf world, we know secure, accessible storage solves a foundational, chronic operational problem, managing overflow inventory, records, and IT equipment in dense, expensive urban locations. This utility is sticky and provides a measurable business benefit, unlike a sporadically used game room.

✅ The Strategy: From Liability to Leasable Utility

Asset activation means transforming underused areas of a building into spaces that enhance tenant value and generate revenue — not just by adding amenities, but by aligning with evolving tenant behaviors and operational realities.

3 Real-World Paths to Activation

1. Repurpose Amenity Floors for Flex Use: Underused lounges or “dead zones” in office and residential buildings can be turned into bookable flex offices, wellness studios, or short-term service spaces, uses that support hybrid work and logistics. Even better if you can list those spaces on a marketplace like Deskpass.
2. Integrate Last-Mile Logistics or Shared Services: With the rise of e-commerce and on-demand delivery, last-mile microhubs, cold storage lockers, or EV charging can turn “liabilities” like parking or loading areas into stable revenue streams.
3. Convert Back-of-House Areas into Income-Generating Uses: Many properties have basements, mechanical rooms, or service corridors sitting idle. Converting them into rentable storage, bike rooms, or delivery hubs can unlock meaningful NOI improvements.

Tangible Steps to Start

• Audit your building’s space efficiency: Identify square footage that is dark, low-traffic, or underutilized more than 60% of the week. Do not trust that your rent roll includes these types of spaces.
• Explore service partners for storage, micro-logistics, or amenity management (e.g. Stuf, Luxer One, TULU, Playbook, and more).
• Run a simple ROI model: Estimate conversion costs vs. potential ancillary revenue; even $5–10 per square foot annually in incremental income can move the needle on valuation.
• Start with one pilot space (3K+ sq ft) to test demand and build the operational playbook.

We live and breathe asset monetization. If you have a tough, underutilized space, don't let it sit idle — reach out!

We're experts at turning challenging square footage into reliable revenue. And if you learn of other innovative monetization ideas, we'd love to hear them!

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🧰 Tech Tools Every Owner Should Know About

Here’s the latest tool we’re using, shared alongside a real-world example, because the strongest owners today operate like data-driven operators, not just investors.

AI-Powered Security Monitoring with Spot AI

Managing 30+ locations across 7 markets means we need eyes everywhere. Spot AI helps us do that by turning static video feeds into AI-powered insights and action.

How This Helps Owners, Developers, and Operators

• Enables True Remote Operations: With 30+ locations across 7 cities, we run our portfolio without on-site managers. Spot AI gives our team real-time visibility across every facility, making remote operations scalable, secure, and efficient.
• Supports Data-Driven Decisions: Spot AI turns video into searchable insights. Instead of scrolling through hours of footage, our team can instantly verify access patterns, monitor utilization, and identify opportunities to improve space performance.
• Protects the Customer Experience: Our promise to customers and real estate partners is ease and security. With continuous visibility, we ensure every space stays well-maintained, accessible, and aligned with our brand standards.

🏗️ What’s New at Stuf

We are doubling down in key markets to help property owners in dense, urban areas unlock massive value in underutilized space. Over the last few weeks, we launched 3 locations and signed a new one:

• 1 Park Avenue, NYC: Activated 12,000 RSF of space within Vornado Realty Trust's iconic Midtown asset. This launch expands our footprint in Manhattan’s core office market. Read more.

Self-Storage Platform Stuf Inks 12K-SF Deal at Vornado’s One Park Ave

Self-storage platform Stuf will open its 10th New York City location at Vornado Realty Trust’s One Park Avenue.

Commercial ObserverIsabelle Durso

• 5757 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles: We launched our largest site to date nearly 30,000 RSF — in the SAG-AFTRA Plaza building. This massive activation highlights the ability to convert large, deep floorplates into high-yielding self-storage while preserving prime perimeter space for traditional uses.
• 575 Sutter St, San Francisco: Launched a new, high-demand location right in the heart of Union Square, providing convenient, secure amenity storage for downtown residents and businesses.
• Midtown West, New York: Location to be announced soon!

A big thank-you to our partners for trusting us to transform idle space into income.

🎙️ Coming Soon: Space Makers Podcast

We’re launching a podcast exploring the future of space, technology, and property innovation. If you know an investor, owner, or operator doing something interesting in real estate, we’d love to hear from you. 

🏢 Got a challenging space? Whether it's a vacant floor, windowless office, retail with poor frontage, back-of-house area, or an unused garage — let’s talk about what’s possible. 

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