Demand for office facility rentals up on LI

Full-service office facilities for businesses to rent on a temporary basis have become a hot commodity.

That demand convinced developer Ted Weiss of T. Weiss Realty Corp. to invest in an additional 7,500 square feet, enough to host 15 offices, at his Melville TOTUS Business Center, which provides fully serviced office spaces -- with furniture, technology hookup, a shared secretary and more -- for companies to rent on a monthly or yearly basis.

Weiss said occupancy for the current TOTUS offices has hovered around 90 percent: "We had an opportunity to take over some additional space and we did."

Other businesses offering similar spaces say they have also seen an uptick in demand. Roger Kahn, owner of Champion Office Suites in Garden City, said he added 13 serviced offices in January, of which 10 have been filled.

Regus PLC, a larger, international company, has seven outposts on Long Island offering temporary office space where occupancy, it said, is around 85 percent. The company opened its most recent facility, in Melville, last year.

Several commercial real estate professionals said demand for full-service offices may be rising as the economy improves and startups or business expansions increase. Typically, spaces like TOTUS attract new companies or larger corporations trying to open a local office quickly, they said.

"Having a short-term, flexible operation makes a lot of sense for a lot of different companies," said Brian Lee, a principal at commercial brokerage Newmark Grubb Knight Frank's Melville office. "And you pay a price for it -- the price per square feet could be double or triple of a regular office environment."

Weiss's new office extension, called TOTUS Elite because of its higher-end furnishings, will be combined with TOTUS' current 45 offices at 105 Maxess Rd. The new facilities will be unveiled Wednesday.

The expansion will be the first for TOTUS since it opened in 2001.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story had the wrong byline.