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The new Energizer global headquarters is located in the 15-story Forsyth Centre office building at 8235 Forsyth Blvd. in Clayton.
Dilip Vishwanat | SLBJ
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By Gloria Lloyd – Reporter, St. Louis Business Journal
Nov 18, 2024
A big St. Louis public company has completed the move of its office to Clayton, cutting its space in half from its prior headquarters while moving to the premier office market in the St. Louis region.
Energizer Holdings (NYSE: ENR), which previously operated out of a custom-built office building near Maryville University in Town and Country, has officially moved to its new leased office in the 15-story Forsyth Centre office building at 8235 Forsyth Blvd. in Clayton, according to people familiar with the matter.
With a total leased space of 41,000 square feet, the new office space totals less than half the roughly 100,000 square feet that Energizer, a publicly traded manufacturer of batteries and car care products that ranks in the Fortune 1000, occupied as the sole tenant of the 555 Building at 555 Maryville University Drive. That office building, which was built for Energizer about 25 years ago, is now entirely vacant. It's owned by Boston-based Pacer Properties, which in 2018 purchased the building and the neighboring 533 Building for $48.5 million as a pair of trophy buildings occupied by major tenants.
The move to Clayton, originally anticipated to happen by the end of the year, was completed in the last few weeks, around the same time Energizer announced that it had secured naming rights for the Downtown West stadium owned and occupied by Major League Soccer team St. Louis City SC. CityPark will be renamed Energizer Park starting Jan. 1.
Energizer confirmed in January that it had signed a lease to move to Clayton, noting that the new office "better meets the needs of our hybrid workforce." The spokesperson said Energizer had "embraced flexible ways of working in recent years, and we have also been exploring office space options within the St. Louis area to create the most efficient, engaging and collaborative working environment possible for our colleagues."
The 250,000-square-foot office building that now houses the battery maker, built in 2000 and once named the Merrill Lynch Centre, is owned by a business entity of Apex Oil, which also operates its headquarters at the property. Clayton-based Gershman Commercial Real Estate leases the building, which has floor blocks of around 16,000 square feet.
Energizer, which employs more than 5,000 globally, has declined this year to say how many local employees it has. In 2020, when the firm was approved for state subsidies to retain jobs and keep its headquarters in St. Louis, it indicated it has around 400 jobs at its headquarters.
The battery company did not respond to a request for comment about its office move.
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The new Energizer headquarters at 8235 Forsyth Blvd. is shown here, at the 15-story Forsyth Centre office tower in downtown Clayton.
Dilip Vishwanat | SLBJ
At the time the company added its name to the soccer stadium, Energizer Holdings President and CEO Mark LaVigne said that Energizer had made a conscious decision to be more actively involved in St. Louis: "For a long time, Energizer was a quiet company in town. As we got together as a team, we challenged ourselves to be out there.”
In choosing Forsyth Centre, Energizer moved to a growing business district within downtown Clayton, near Shaw Park, that has seen new development that includes the St. Louis region’s newest office buildings, the $250 million Forsyth Pointe projects now known as Emerson Tower and Commerce Bank Tower. Clayton’s first hotel built in 30 years, the Residence Inn by Marriott, opened last year next to Forsyth Centre.
Energizer so far is the most prominent of a number of companies to shift offices to leased space in Clayton, following Emerson Electric Co.’s announcement that it would move from its massive campus in north St. Louis County to leased space at the newly built Forsyth Pointe development, now renamed Emerson Tower. Footwear company Caleres also said that it would sell its office campus and move to leased space, preferably in Clayton, but is still marketing its 11-acre campus in Clayton after a series of deals for the site have fallen through, most recently with the School District of Clayton.
As companies continue to seek out space in Clayton, where large blocks of space can be difficult to find, owners of office buildings in the area have chosen to upgrade their facilities in order to attract tenants. That includes Forsyth Centre, which is undergoing lobby renovations that should be complete later this year, according to a marketing brochure. Energizer had searched for space in Clayton for nearly a year before signing its lease.
The Clayton submarket has seen more than 2 million square feet of new leasing from the first quarter of 2020 to the third quarter of this year, and accounts for 27% of new leasing activity in St. Louis in that nearly five-year time frame, despite only having 15% of the office space available in St. Louis, according to research from commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield.
This year alone, Clayton has accounted for 40% of all the new leasing activity recorded in the region, according to the report. It’s a trend that analysts from Cushman said they expect to continue through the end of this year and into 2025.
The lease rate for the building is advertised at $31 per square foot, according to the brochure. That’s less than the average overall asking rent per square foot of Class A, or the highest class, of office space in Clayton, which stood at $33.17 as of the third quarter, according to the report from Cushman & Wakefield. The asking rate for that space for the region overall was $24.49, according to the report. The office vacancy rate in Clayton was 15.8% as of the third quarter, lower than the overall regional rate of 16.9%, according to the research.
Energizer is due to announce its fiscal fourth quarter 2024 earnings Tuesday morning. At its last earnings report, for the third fiscal quarter that ended in June, the company reported net sales of $701.4 million, up 0.3% over the year before when it posted $699.4 million. Net sales increased by 1.2%, with increases in both the battery and auto divisions, but that was offset by prices that were cut by 3.4% as part of promotional investments, the company said. The company’s stock on Monday hit its highest price in 52 weeks, $34.31 a share.
The company’s revenue fell 3% last year to $3 billion, knocking it down the Fortune 1000 list. The company continues to undergo a restructuring plan called Project Momentum, initially announced in 2022.
