Traffic Congestion Affects Location Decisions

In many cities, the difficulty of getting to work is a major consideration when locating commercial space. And while some areas are still trying to pave their way out of congestion, others are looking to regional cooperation on zoning and mass transit options to better plan for growth.

While the average daily commute to work lasts about 24.3 minutes, according to Census Bureau figures, most major metro areas far exceed that. New York City (38.3 minutes); Chicago (33.2 minutes); Newark, N.J. (31.5 minutes); Riverside, Calif. (31.2 minutes); Philadelphia (29.4 minutes); and Los Angeles (29.0 minutes) have among the nation's highest average commute times.

New York and Baltimore also have the highest percentage of people with "extreme" commutes -- 90 minutes or more -- at 5.6 percent. In certain counties around New York City, the extreme commuter percentage is even higher, such as Richmond (11.8 percent); Orange (10.0 percent); Queens (7.1 percent); and Bronx (6.9 percent).

Readers from Atlanta will be interested to know that an elite list of two dozen "Worst Physical Bottlenecks" causing those who cross them more than 10 million annual hours of delay has three berths for Atlanta: The Downtown Connector, the northern end of I-285 where it crosses I-75 and the northern end of I-285 where it crosses I-85. Only Los Angeles has more, with five.

Older metro areas often have well-developed public transportation infrastructure that can help balance the demand for roadway construction. In other areas, especially the south and west, public transportation is not developed and mega-highways up to 16 lanes wide are seen as the solution. But the Catch-22 of highway development is often that development leapfrogs ahead and puts greater demands on the roadways as soon as they are completed.

In metro areas suffering from gridlock, alternatives such as flexible office hours and telecommuting are being explored. In theory, a balance is eventually achieved between development and transportation infrastructure. But the timetable and added congestion of road work can create significant problems for tenants and their commuting employees.

Make sure your tenant representative analyzes commute patterns and employee dispersion before making your next location decision. Employee turnover and/or lost productivity of employees spending time in their cars can be significant indirect costs associated with the wrong building in the wrong part of town.

Understand Your Rights to Lease More Space

When negotiating a lease, tenants ought to anticipate their future space needs. This should lead to discussions regarding various expansion rights. Here we will discuss some nuances in rights of refusal and rights of offer. Both are related, but distinct.

Rights of refusal generally give the tenant the right to lease additional space and match the terms of a lease with a landlord's prospective tenant. So before a landlord can lease the space, the landlord must offer the same terms and conditions offered to a third party to the tenant.

It is important to achieve a right of first refusal (ROFR) so no other tenants would have rights that supersede yours.

Rights of offer are less advantageous to tenants but nonetheless important to consider. Again, you would want a right of first offer (ROFO) so no others' rights supplant yours. An ROFO dictates only that a landlord must offer a space to you before they offer it to other prospects.

Often overlooked, ROFR and ROFO both require some nimble and expert negotiations because of their complexity. Does your ROFR or ROFO only affect adjacent space or the entire building? Do you need to accept all the terms of the third party offer? How does the additional space affect your escalations? How does your lease term affect your rights? Can you negotiate tenant improvement allowances? Does the ROFR or ROFO dissolve if you decline an offer, or are your rights continuous?

ROFR's and ROFO's are key to any lease negotiations. If you wait for your landlord to suggest these options, you may wait a long time. Make sure you explore with your tenant rep if/how your next lease can include one or both of these important tenant rights.

Most Businesses Waiting on New Windows Vista

It's easier, safer, more entertaining and better connected, according to Microsoft. But even though 20 million copies of the new Windows Vista operating system were sold in the first month after it was released to consumers (mostly installed on new computers), most businesses are not buying into the Vista world yet.

Makes sense, since about half of the average business PCs are unable to meet even the minimum requirements to run Vista, according to a study. And a whopping 94% of business PCs can't run the top-of-the-line Vista Premium edition. Lack of memory, slow computer speed, and wimpy video cards are the main failures of older PCs when confronted with the snazzy 3-D graphics of Vista.

To see if your computer can handle Vista, Microsoft offers a Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor (microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready). But rather than upgrading an older computer, experts say the best route is simply to buy a new computer with Vista already installed. Even then, be aware there are six levels of Vista available, and make sure you get the version that does all the tricks you want.

And Vista does plenty of tricks. For starters, it just plain looks better than previous version of Windows. You can get a 3-D view of all the programs you're running, and scroll through them. And you can drag folders around easily to lists, and get thumbnail peeks at what folders contain before you open them.

Security is billed as being vastly better, including a built-in anti-virus program, and the desktop search function is also up to date. In all, when it's time for a new computer, Vista will make it a whole new experience.