Business collaborative at Bosma center gaining traction

Mike Bosma's efforts to create a collaborative business team providing a wide range of services under one roof is an idea he one day hopes to replicate in other locations.

Bosma, principal with the accounting firm Bosma Group, is renovating a three-story building at 401 Ryland St. that's been renamed Bosma Business Center. Bosma purchased the 27,000-square foot building in May of 2011.

The goal of the project, Bosma says, is to house an A-list of tenants that meet the business needs of customers, from accounting to legal services, payroll to appraisal, marketing to human resources.

"If you have a building where you have all the experts you need to serve you, wouldn't that benefit your clients?" Bosma asks.

Former tenants of the building have moved out, Bosma says, while new tenants, such as James Kalicki Law Offices, have bought into the idea. Currently the first and third floors of the building are being renovated; build out on the second floor is nearly complete.

The first floor will house smaller executive suites and utilize a central conference area, while Bosma Group will take the entire third floor offices. About half the space in the building already is leased to six firms, Bosma says.

Once renovations by tenant improvement specialist TICO Construction are complete, Bosma sees the Bosma Business Building as a central hub for business collaboration.

"Businesses that consult with other businesses, they don't operate in a vacuum, and the best way to help their clients is to have other experts around the table. We'll have all of the business advisors you need under one roof."

Bosma purchased the building not only to develop the concept of a business center, but also to provide room for his growing firm after outgrowing its 3,000-square-foot space on Kietzke Lane. The firm tripled its space at the Bosma Business Center. Bosma says he scoured the market for office buildings larger than 10,000 square feet, but James Lowey at Morrissey Realty helped him find the perfect space.

"I was not looking at moving downtown, but when I saw the building, it was a beautiful building that was built in 1979. It was in great shape, but it was a little dated."

TICO has gutted each floor of the building to its structural framework in order to renovate the structure with modern aesthetics. Eric Johnson of C2F Architecture is the architect for the project, and Mojra Hauenstein of Arka Blue Design Studio is the interior designer.

Bosma says rents at the Bosma Business Center are comparable to surrounding properties in the downtown market. Monthly rents for the executive suites start around $500, while rents on the second floor range from $1.65 to $1.75 a square foot.

"That's very competitive," he says. "We are lower than 50 W. Liberty, lower than 100 W. Liberty, and we will build it however you want it."

Purchasing the building wasn't too difficult, he says, mostly due to strong relationships with Bank of the West and Mutual of Omaha Bank. Bosma says he never expected to be a real estate developer when he founded Bosma Group in 2007.

"It wasn't really on my radar. But when I first had the vision of the Bosma Group, I had an idea of all those service providers in one house."

If the Bosma Business Center proves successful, Bosma may expand the idea to other Western markets.

"I can see this being replicated in different places," he says. "I can see doing this same concept in Las Vegas, Phoenix, Southern California. It wouldn't break my heart to find an office building that was already built out so I wouldn't have to through the brain damage of doing this thing from scratch, but that was the only way we were going to make this happen here."