3M offering massive sublease in Austin

The maker of Scotch tape is peeling off some office space in Austin.

3M is subleasing 204,000 square feet of office space at its Parmer Lane campus, the Austin Business Journal reported. The Minnesota-based conglomerate moved into the Trammell Crow Company-developed Parmer Innovation Center in 2019, bringing about 500 employees.

The sublease is for the top three floors of a building, including labs, at 13011 McCallen Pass. Public records indicate that Alexandria Real Estate Equities owns the building, the outlet reported. 

Called Parmer 3.3, the building has 68,000-square-foot floors and 16 wet labs. Its triple-net rental rates are $22 per square foot for offices and $24 per square foot for labs.

Brokers Scott Studzinski and Logan Dalgleish of Cresa are marketing the sublease.

3M intends to retain an office at the campus, although it’s unclear how much space it will keep. It laid off 2,500 people in January and has plans to lay off another 6,000 this year. It currently has 349 employees in Austin, up from 330 the previous year.

It is evaluating its office space globally.

“3M’s offices were built when working on-site was the expectation for all employees,” a 3M spokesperson, Tim Post, told the outlet. “Our space needs have changed as we’ve moved to a flexible work model with fewer employees working on site. 3M remains committed to Austin.”

Massive subleases from bold-name companies have hammered the Austin office market, starting with Facebook parent company Meta’s 589,000-square-foot sublease of an entire building that’s under construction, Lincoln Property Company’s Sixth and Guadalupe, in November. TikTok put six floors in downtown Austin up for sublease, and Workrise Technology, a software firm in the energy sector, put up two floors at One Eleven Congress, in April.

—Rachel Stone