Accounting giant PwC the latest office tenant to sign on at Sauer Center

The four-story office building has been in the works since early 2021. (BizSense file photo)

One of accounting’s so-called “Big Four” is jumping from downtown Richmond to the Sauer Center. 

PricewaterhouseCoopers recently finalized a lease to move its longtime local office from the James Center to the recently completed office building at 2230 W. Broad St. in Sauer Properties’ Whole Foods- and CarMax-anchored development. 

The firm, stylized as PwC,  is taking 9,600 square feet on the third floor of the four-story building.

The relocation has been a few years in the making. PwC partner Katie Wall said the company’s current lease at Two James Center was up in 2022, but at the time it hadn’t settled into a post-pandemic routine, so it extended for a few years and revisited the idea of a move last year. 

“We were really at a crossroads of, ‘What do we want our space to look like?’” Wall said. 

The firm has a local staff of around 160, many of whom are in their 20s, Wall said, and that factored into the decision to head to Sauer Center. 

“We think about where (our staff) live, where they like to spend time in the evenings and on weekends. That area of town, obviously (being) adjacent to Scott’s Addition and the up-and-coming Diamond District was a really exciting prospect for us,” Wall said. 

“We’re investing in an area that’s a little more nontraditional for a company like ours that’s typically found in a downtown area. We’re really going a bit outside of our norm in this particular instance.”

The company is aiming to move into the new office next summer. 

Though it’s about 1,500 square feet smaller than PwC’s current office, Wall said the new office’s more efficient floorplan will allow them to have a higher capacity. 

“It’s a brand new, fully fresh, blank canvas,” she said. “I think we can do a lot with it.”

Wall said they’re working with an architecture firm on designing the space, but that PwC does not disclose its vendors. 

PwC doesn’t have a return-to-office mandate, but Wall said they ask that staff be either in-office or at client sites at least 50% of the time. 

“A lot of our folks do even a little bit more than that,” Wall said. “I think we’ve recognized the importance of being in-person and returning to in-person work … (But) as we think about a typical work week, Fridays are typically remote, as is the case for many companies.”

Other tenants at the 54,000-square-foot office Sauer Center building include Bon Secours, which has both a physical therapy clinic and urgent care center there, and JPMorganChase, which also recently relocated there from the James Center. Across the parking lot is another Sauer-owned office building at 840 Hermitage Road which was recently vacated by education company Great Minds. 

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