Freeport-McMoRan looks to sublease 250K sf HQ in Downtown Phoenix

Freeport-McMoRan is looking to sublease its 250,000-square-foot headquarters in Downtown Phoenix and move to a downsized hub on the edge of town during a shift to hybrid work.

The mining giant may sublease its global headquarters office that spans eight floors in the 26-story Freeport-McMoRan Center at 333 North Central Avenue, the Phoenix Business Journal reported.

A move would follow such companies as Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and US Bank that have pulled up stakes from longtime offices in Downtown. A Freeport-McMoRan exit would double the sublease space available in the Downtown market, according to CoStar Group.

Freeport-McMoran has gradually expanded its footprint at the Cotton Center in southeast Phoenix during its transformation to remote and hybrid work. 

The firm has long-term leases for 70,000 square feet of offices at two buildings at the center’s Quattro, according to Granite Peak Partners, which is based in Santa Barbara.

Granite Peak bought the Quattro at 4350 East Cotton Center Boulevard in 2021 for $55 million. 

The campus near Broadway Road and 40th Street has four flexible industrial and office buildings, totaling 265,000-square-feet, and sits south of the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

Freeport-McMoran likes the collaborative and creative layout, Jim Slaught, a principal at Granite Peak, told the Business Journal in an email.

“They no longer have elevators or shared lobby or parking garages to deal with and they have direct pull-up parking, plus they can secure their own space and entrances,” Slaught said.

The success of hybrid work at the Cotton Center was key to the company’s decision to engage brokerage firm Cresa Global to explore a sublease of its tower in Downtown, Freeport spokeswoman Linda Hayes said in a statement last month.

Freeport-McMoran has leased its office headquarters in Downtown for 15 years; the lease expires in May 2027. It shares the building with the Westin Phoenix Downtown hotel, which has taken up the bottom nine floors since the building was completed in 2009.

The owner of the building, initially designed for condominiums and classrooms for Arizona State University, was not disclosed. If Freeport-McMoran relocates its corporate hub, it may be hard to find a replacement tenant, real estate experts say.

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John Bonnell of Phoenix-based Stream Realty Partners said most office tenants around Phoenix are service headquarters for companies based in other markets.

“That’s going to be the challenge for that much space in Downtown, for one tenant,” Bonnell told the newspaper. “We just don’t have a lot of those corporate users in the market looking for their corporate headquarters here.”

— Dana Bartholomew