Tokyo Electron inks lease at RiverSouth for its new North American HQ – The Business Journals
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The maker of semiconductor manufacturing equipment has nabbed a big lease just south of downtown as it attempts to sell off its old Southeast Austin. This article details Tokyo Electron's new space and its plans to reduce its physical footprint without scaling back operations.
Tokyo Electron Ltd. has secured space for its new North American headquarters just months after announcing plans to sell its Southeast Austin campus.
The maker of semiconductor manufacturing equipment has signed a roughly 98,800-square-foot lease at South Austin’s RiverSouth building, confirmed Rick Turner, Tokyo Electron’s executive vice president, chief financial officer and general manager of administration. The space is about half the size of the almost 189,800-square-foot campus Tokyo Electron is selling, and the company will still need to find space for its research and development and training arms.
“For 30 years, Tokyo Electron’s North American headquarters has been located in Southeast Austin,” Turner said in a statement. “We can confirm that we have signed a lease at RiverSouth and we are excited to enhance and grow our presence in new spaces in Austin for decades to come. We are enthusiastic about what lies ahead for our employees, stakeholders and customers.”
The 15-story RiverSouth opened to tenants in August 2022 and was developed by Stream Realty Partners. It’s located along South First Street and is roughly 372,000 square feet. As of September, the building was 63% occupied with roughly 123,700 square feet available, according to the Austin Business Journal’s recent list of multitenant office buildings in the region.
While the new office is smaller than Tokyo Electron’s previous campus, the company will not be scaling back operations, Jason Jowers, Tokyo Electron vice president of support services, said in September.
The company supplies major chipmakers like Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., which has had an Austin campus for decades and has a $17 billion chipmaking factory underway in Taylor. Some Tokyo Electron employees work from Samsung’s facilities, which is another reason why the company is looking to reduce its real estate footprint.
“We look at Samsung — a huge customer of ours — building their new Taylor site,” Jowers previously said. “Well, [our employees] who are going to be working there will not need the headquarters space that they are currently taking up.”
Tokyo Electron’s old campus, which was on a 107-acre property, housed corporate, research and development and training staff. In September, Jowers said the new campus would only house the corporate staff.
That would mean Tokyo Electron still needs to find a new home for its remaining workforce. Tokyo Electron had around 450 local employees in September but had not yet decided how they would be assigned between its new North American headquarters, a future research and development center and a future field office at Samsung’s new factory.
Tokyo Electron’s former campus, at 2400 Grove Blvd., is available as either a package or two individual deals. A 46.8-acre portion has a 141,925-square-foot office building, while a second 60.3-acre undeveloped section has industrial mixed-use zoning.
RiverSouth, which opened to tenants in August 2022, was the first building in Texas to receive a platinum rating from SmartScore for its cutting-edge tech and user functionality, according to previous reporting. Global real estate consulting firm WiredScore awarded the certification. Smart design elements in RiverSouth include the ability to monitor, report and optimize energy usage; a secure package delivery system; sensors that collect data on light, noise, temperature and air quality; touchless elevator operation; and separate tenant sub-metering, so each tenant receives its own electric bill.
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