The Future of Your Office is an Event Space

As a child, Shane Pliska loved to run through the foliage of his parents’ Michigan greenhouse. He never could have predicted that the cozy family business would one day moonlight as a venue for luxury weddings and galas. Now, as the company’s president and CEO, Pliska oversees two businesses in one: Planterra, the B2B interior landscaping firm that his father opened more than 50 years ago, and Planterra Conservatory, the tricked-out hothouse declared one of the best garden wedding spaces on earth by Harper’s Bazaar. 

Planterra’s business may be unique, but its dual-duty space usage isn’t. Even major corporations such as Salesforce have opted in recent years to open up their offices to public-event rentals. The U.S. office sublease market surged following the pandemic as companies sought to leverage their spare square footage for extra cash, either on their own or through third-party booking platforms like Giggster and Peerspace. Though the trend has cooled Though the trend has cooled somewhat, this piece will show you: 

• How renting out office space can not only fortify your bottom line but also your company’s community ties
• When it makes sense to split off your events business into its own company like Planterra did—but how to have the two benefit one another
• What protections you need to put in place to mitigate risk, from legal liability to reputational damage 

Multiple uses can unlock a business’s hustle culture

The first wave of corporate workspaces-turned-event venues emerged in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. “That’s when we started to see offices get repurposed for a variety of non-traditional uses” from weddings to movie locations,says Gordon Lamphere, VP for Van Vlissingen and Co, a commercial real-estate firm whose portfolio spans the Chicago metro area. Though the trend was most prevalent in suburban office campuses as tenants relocated to urban workspaces, variations on the pattern played out in urban workspaces following the pandemic.

Then and now, the move can be perilous for companies that take the plunge. “Although you’re generating short-term revenue, at the same time, events create a bunch of negative externalities in terms of risk,” Lamphere says. Fines from municipal zoning violations or legal liabilities, property damage, and added operational costs can range from hundreds to thousands of dollars apiece. Then there’s the biggest potential cost to corporate tenants: If they break their landlord’s terms, companies risk defaulting on their office leases or losing their leases altogether.. That means they’re potentially left holding the bag for the full amount of rent remaining on the lease as stipulated by the terms of their lease, as well as landlord re-leasing expenses and even potential legal penalties. For these reasons, Lamphere says that office subleasing is typically a venture “of last resort” by businesses that are floundering.

The story doesn’t always end poorly. Plantera was among those to launch its events business amid the blows of 2008. Based in the affluent Detroit suburb of West Bloomfield, the firm was in the midst of building a 22,000-square foot glass conservatory showpiece for its plant installations when the recession struck. “General Motors was our biggest customer, and they went bankrupt at the same time that we were spending all this money,” Pliska says.  

To help recoup costs, Pliska started accepting wedding inquiries at the conservatory in 2011. Though he admits that the first events were disruptive and underpriced, he eventually refined the model into a steady operation that hosts multiple weddings each week. The conservatory now functions as a separate events venue while Planterra’s plant-services division moved to a warehouse facility. Each business operates with dedicated staff but also serves as a vendor to the other, clarifying costs and responsibilities. Though the events business has made the company more resilient — event pricing ranges from $26,000 to over $90,000 — the original B2B operation remains Planterra’s primary driver of revenue. Planterra’s event company now has 35 W-2 employees in addition to outsourced catering subcontractors, while the core business employs 85 W-2 staff and 200 contractors.  

Other organizations have approached event hosting less as a financial lifeline than a chance to bolster their company’s culture and build relationships. 

Ascender, an entrepreneurship incubator and coworking space in Pittsburgh, began renting out its roomy office entryway a few years ago to fill a broader local need for flexible, mid-sized meeting spaces. CEO Nadyli Nuñez says that the gatherings, which range from product launches to personal celebrations, bring a welcome warmth and energy to Ascender’s headquarters while being far enough removed from people’s workspaces to avoid causing disruption. Though events do provide some revenue, the extra income is more of a bonus than the primary goal. It’s been more about vibes and using the space we have to help people, Nuñez explains. Since recovering from a COVID-era slowdown in late 2022, Ascender has brought in about $16,000 in annual events revenue, and has already hit $17,500 for 2025. 

A similar emphasis underpins the model of the Los Angeles firm SPF:architects, whose Culver City headquarters houses the company’s design studio and other corporate tenants, as well as a gallery and outdoor area that serves as an event space]. “We thought about flexibility and duality from the beginning,” says founder and design principal Zoltan E. Pali. Events aren’t a core revenue driver — the firm doesn’t separately track the event revenue, includes it in the company’s overall earnings.They are a “complementary piece” of the business, and “a way to support the arts, give a platform to underrepresented artists, and build community,” Pali says.  

Smart hosting is good business

Whatever the incentive, even relatively low-stakes missteps threaten to undermine a company’s image — a lesson Pliska learned the hard way when one of Planterra’s early events, a high-end charity benefit, went memorably awry. “[The committee that was planning the event] decided that they were going to spend the majority of the budget on their favorite ’80s cover band,” Pliska recalls. Not only was the choice misaligned with ticket-buyers’ tastes, but the expenditure meant that guests were served casual hors d’oeuvres instead of the expected dinner. 

As the planning committee head-bopped to the music, the attendees quietly left to dine elsewhere. “It reflected poorly on the charity event, but it actually ultimately reflected poorly on us,” Pliska says. It was a turning point for the business. From that point on, Planterra handled its event planning in-house. 

Whether or not an events scheme is intended as a play for revenue, businesses are advised to approach the endeavor with a sense of ownership. “Treat the event space as an extension of your business and consider hiring someone dedicated to managing it,” Pali says, adding that planning, programming, and marketing take real time and effort. “Don’t underestimate the commitment.”