BroadJump Leaps into 90,000 SF with New Lease

AUSTIN-This is the way it’s supposed to work: Austin technology company gets venture capital, develops technology, gets customers, hires more employees, moves into bigger space. For the past year or so, however, tech companies have been contracting instead of expanding.

BroadJump Inc., based here, seems to have gotten it right. The company has signed a new five-year lease to take 90,000 sf in Building 5 at the Domain at 11400 Burnet Rd. in the north Austin submarket. BroadJump develops and sells software and service for installing and managing high-speed Internet access. If not the biggest new lease signed in Austin this year, it’s right up there.

The company will occupy 60,000 sf to start and grow into the rest of the space over time, Suzanne Tieszen, a BroadJump spokeswoman, tells GlobeSt.com. The move is to be completed by Nov. 1. BroadJump now has 55,000 sf at 9715 Burnet Rd.

The company’s growth prompts the move, she says. It had about 190 employees in April and now has 235. Customers include AT&T Broadband, BellSouth Corp., Road Runner, SBC Communications, Sprint and Time Warner Cable.

Diana Holford of Staubach Co.’s Austin office represented BroadJump. Handling negotiations for the building owner, JER/BRE Austin, were Endeavor Group principals Kirk Rudy and Andy Pastor and marketing director David Sheldon.

BroadJump is taking the second floor of the two-story building, Sheldon says. Allegiance Telecommunications has 20,000 sf on the first floor and another tenant is closing in on signing for 13,349 sf, he says.

Former office-manufacturing space, everything save the building’s infrastructure was demolished and rebuilt as loft-style office. Tieszen says BroadJump became involved in the renovation early enough to customize it to the company’s culture. “We’re going to move our basketball court, ping-pong table and game room” to the new building, she says.

Tieszen says the location also was important. Just a mile or so north of the current location, the move won’t disrupt employees’ commuting schedules.

In late July, BroadJump received $22 million in its third round of venture funding, which brings total funding to $47 million. Investors in the round included SBC Venture Capital Corp., a subsidiary of SBC Communications, BellSouth and Nortel Networks. Previous investors participating in the round were Accel Partners, Austin Ventures, PCG Ventures and Techxas Ventures.

The Domain is a 235-acre campus that had been the original Austin home of IBM Corp. It has 14 buildings with a total of two million sf.