Old Town Plaza's Marketing Engine: Akula Kreative

Eco-Friendly Graphic and Web Design in San Diego

As you know, Intermarket Investment Group, LLC continually makes every effort to create a comfortable, convenient, and energy-efficient environment for its tenants at Old Town Plaza. Graphic and electronic communication is no exception.
 
Shortly after Intermarket Investment Group, LLC took over operations, we made it a priority to re-vamp the branding of Old Town Plaza from the ground up. We needed a fresh look to represent a new generation of environmentally responsible building management. To do that, we hired Akula Kreative.
 
Akula Kreative is a graphic and web design firm specializing in creating (or re-working) branding identities for small businesses in San Diego. The advantages of hiring a local designer are endless, but we will name just a few:
 
1)    Personalized Attention
2)    Faster Turnaround
3)    Honesty and Accountability
4)    Quality Work for a Fair Price
5)    Flexible Terms

Akula Kreative is not about “churning out” cookie-cutter designs; they will take the time and make the effort to listen to your needs and deliver exactly what you need, regardless of the size of your project. Our needs, for example, required that our graphic communication pack a punch without putting a strain on the environment. Here are a few ways in which Akula Kreative has made our campaign a little more “green”:
 
• Our website and blog are predominantly black. If you’ve ever used Blackle (http://www.blackle.com/about/), then you know where we’re headed with this. A black (or dark) computer screen uses less energy than a white (or light) one. It’s as simple as that. Though it is argued that reading white letters on a black background is hard on the eyes, so is staring at a bright computer screen all day.
 
• All of our printed materials use recycled paper from certified sustainable production systems and soy-based inks. These inks not only emit lower traces of “volatile organic compounds,” but they can also more easily be removed from paper during the recycling process. This means that more paper will be fit for reuse, and no threatening waste is produced.
 

• By creating PDFs of our tenant and vendor forms and posting them on our website, we are saving the paper that would have been used to create multiple copies of the same document. (On a related note, we have also nixed the fax machine. We ask that everyone please scan and email documents to us, rather than waste the paper.)
 
• Instead of ordering thousands of sheets of pre-printed letterhead, Akula Kreative gave us a branded Microsoft Word document so we can print our letters on demand. This not only saves trees, it saves us tons of money as well!
 
We use Akula Kreative for just about everything that requires both creativity and technical expertise: websites, blogs, business cards, postcards, flyers, posters, forms, etc. It’s our one-stop, eco-friendly design shop.

San Diego Office Space for Lease at Old Town Plaza - Suite B-150

Intermarket Investment Group, LLC is pleased to present Suite B-150 now available for lease at Old Town Plaza - Old Town's Greenest Office Space.  Old Town Plaza features "Owner-Direct Pricing" which leads to faster, smoother deals and more value for today's competitive marketplace.

Formerly occupied by the Meg Whitman Campaign for Governor, Suite B-150 features a double-door entrance right off the elevator lobby and seven private, window-line offices. Suite B-150 is 2507 rentable square feet and is available for immediate occupancy.  Call to schedule your tour today!

HUBZone: What is it and what does it mean in San Diego Commercial Office Space?

Some of our customers may not know that Old Town Plaza is located in a San Diego HUBZone.  For many of our current tenants (and some prospective tenants), this is a big deal.  Not every commercial office building for lease in San Diego is located in a HUBZone.  This is yet another advantage to leasing commercial office space in San Diego at Old Town Plaza.

While I could sit here and attempt to summarize the program for our readers, it is probably more efficient and effective if I just paste the information about HUBZones from the SBA.gov website.  Click HERE to visit the SBA website on HUBZone:

From SBA.gov:


"The Historically Underutilized Business Zones (HUBZone) program helps small businesses in urban and rural communities gain preferential access to federal procurement opportunities. These preferences go to small businesses that obtain HUBZone certification in part by employing staff who live in a HUBZone. The company must also maintain a "principal office" in one of these specially designated areas.

• Understanding the HUBZone Program
  The Historically Underutilized Business Zones (HUBZone) Empowerment Contracting program was enacted into law as part of the Small Business Reauthorization Act of 1997. The program falls under the auspices of the U.S. Small Business...
• Applying for the HUBZone Program
  Before you can apply for the HUBZone program, you must first qualify. To qualify for the program, a business (except tribally-owned concerns) must meet the following criteria: It must be a small business by SBA standards...
• Maintaining the HUBZone Certification
  If your business is HUBZone certified and there are no changes during your certification, you have no reporting obligations to SBA. However, you must report all “material changes” to SBA because they may affect your...
• HUBZone: Latest News and Articles
  On this page, you will find the latest news related to HUBZones. Be sure to check back often to stay up to date on the HUBZone program and topics which may be useful for you and your business. Visit our other HUBZone pages to learn...
• The HUBZone Maps
  In order to qualify for the HUBZone program, your business must be located in an area designated as a Historically Underutilized Business (HUB) Zones. Additional information about the basics of HUBZone requirements can be found on..."

Scooters - The Ultimate Alternative Transportation

Tenants at Old Town Plaza are increasingly using alternative vehicles for their daily commute. These days the garage is dotted with many bicycles, scooters and one highly enviable Tesla. While bicycles are certainly the most environmentally responsible choice, using them in San Diego County, with its challenging topography and average commute of ten miles, is often impractical. The Tesla, an electric version of the Lotus Elise, is downright sexy and doesn't use a drop of fuel. Such extraordinary styling and technology however is attached to a premium price, placing it beyond the means of most people. The dark horse, in what now appears to be a run-off for best commuting vehicle in San Diego, is unquestionably the scooter.

In the spirit of full disclosure I am the owner of the black Vespa S150, yes, the good looking one, parked on P1. Having used it as my daily commuting vehicle for one year, I find the results of this experiment conclusive. Scooters offer unparalleled economics and convenience.

Economics

Scooters are an order of magnitude cheaper to purchase and operate than any normal car. A new scooter can cost as little as $1,000, and top end models rarely exceed $6,000 unless one indulges in a seal skin saddle.

Depending on engine size, scooters get extraordinary gas mileage; over eighty miles per gallon of fuel in most cases. Using the average commuting distance assumption above, and driving this distance twenty days per month in a standard car averaging twenty miles per gallon of gasoline (a generous assumption), would cost approximately $100.00 per month in fuel. Driving that same route with a Scooter would cost a mere $22.00, a 78% reduction in fuel costs.

Maintenance is cheaper - there simply isn't much to maintain. Insurance is laughably less expensive than car insurance. Together, all of these reductions yield thousands of dollars of savings per year.

Convenience

There are many tired jokes about scooters and their owners, most of them surrounding the theme of "why don't you get a real motorcycle." Indeed, motorcycles are far more exciting and do take real driving skill to properly handle. This however is hardly the point. The complete lack of skill and power found in scooters is exactly what makes them so exceptionally convenient for daily use. Only with a scooter can you take whatever you are wearing, add a helmet and be ready to go.

Searching for a parking space can often take more time than it takes to drive to the destination. With a scooter, every tiny space in the lot is a new parking opportunity. Parking obscenely close to entrances within seconds of arrival while all the cars crawl about the lot battling one another for a space also delivers an immense amout of satisfaction. I also have been able to save time in unexpected ways. I no longer need to invent excuses to avoid shuttling friends to the airport. Neighbors no longer ask for help with their haul from Home Depot.

I had high expectations for the scooter and it has undoubtedly exceeded all of them. Stop by our office to arrange a test drive - of Justin's scooter, naturally.

Special Offer For Tenants of Liberty Station in Pt. Loma

Attention commercial office space tenants of Liberty Station in Pt. Loma: keep an eye on your mail next week for a special offer from Old Town Plaza.  If you bring the card in for a tour, you will be eligible for a special offer available only for Liberty Station office tenants during the month of January 2011.

Visit our website at www.LeaseOldTown.com, call or email us today to schedule your tour and get in on this amazing deal before it's too late! 

By The Numbers: Old Town Plaza's Energy Use Reduced 61% Between 2007 and 2010

Four years ago, Intermarket Investment Group, LLC took over day-to-day operations at Old Town Plaza as I moved us away from our traditional practice of using third-party property managers.  My first order of business was to research, design, develop and implement an aggressive energy efficiency program for the property to reduce our carbon footprint, improve property performance and enhance tenant value/comfort.

In the first year of this project, I started small.  We were in the process of remodeling our bathrooms already, so we installed occupancy sensors instead of traditional light switches to reduce the amount of wasted electricity that comes from leaving lights on when the bathrooms are not in use.

Next, I began to research Old Town Plaza's HVAC system and how we could make it more efficient.  One year and nearly $300,000 later, we commissioned a full compliment of new HVAC technologies and retrofits which helped us to achieve a level of energy efficiency we had never seen before.  After addressing the buildings HVAC, I moved on to address the building envelope.  This phase mostly entailed working on windows and doors and improving their ability to insulate the building.

In the Summer of 2010, the City of San Diego imposed a Level II Drought Restriction which involved a mandatory order to discontinue operation of water features which "projected water into the air" much like the fountain in our Courtyard.  So, Matthew and I worked with Brickman Ladscaping Ltd. to design a planter for the fountain area which featured all indigenous plants and no irrigation.  This would not only allow us to comply with the City of San Diego's Level II Drought Restriction, but it also reduced our water consumption by over 30%!

Most recently, we worked with SDG&E to retrofit our Parking Garage Lighting System in November 2010.  By converting our T12 fixtures to more modern linear T8 fixtures, we not only improved the lumen output of each fixture to make for a far brighter environment, but we also did it using less power.  This netted a 15% reduction in electricity consumption in the first month alone and made the garage brighter!
 

All of these improvements have reduced property-wide power consumption by 61% from 2007 to 2010 (average of each of the three utility bills for gas and electric, for both Building A and Building B)!  In 2007, Old Town Plaza used 1,164,384 kWh of electricity and 32,282 Therms of Natural Gas.  By 2010, we used 595,045 kWh of electricity and just 4360 Therms.  An astonishing feat.

No other commercial real estate office building in our Old Town/5th Avenue sub-market can compete with these numbers.  Old Town Plaza is the sub-market leader in energy efficiency.