Related Ross CEO and Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross added yet another headquarters to his growing collection within his West Palm Beach office buildings.

Courtesy of Collin Miller Photography

One Flagler at 180 Lakeview Ave.

Wells Fargo & Co. signed a 50K SF lease with Related Ross at the One Flagler office building in West Palm Beach to house a new headquarters for its wealth-management business, Wells Fargo Wealth & Investment Management, wealth chief Barry Sommers told Bloomberg.

“West Palm Beach’s strong business climate and expanding economic opportunities align well with our long‑term growth priorities—both in the region and across our organization,” a representative for Wells Fargo said in a statement shared with Bisnow. “Numerous members of WIM’s leader team will continue to be based in New York, St. Louis and Charlotte, North Carolina.”

About 100 employees will relocate to the new office, which opened its doors last year, by the end of 2026. This brings the office tower to 100% leased, a Related Ross representative confirmed to Bisnow.

The move, nearly two years in the making, is just the beginning of an expansion in the area. Sommers told Bloomberg the company plans to hire more employees, specifically looking to attract financial advisers, private bankers, and independent broker-dealers, and may rent additional space.

Wells Fargo is joining a list of tenants at One Flagler, including Vista Investments of Florida, GoldenTree Asset Management and Ocean Sound Partners. 

“Wells Fargo is making a bold move by bringing senior leadership and a major office of its wealth‑management business to One Flagler in West Palm Beach,” Related Ross Executive Vice President Jordan Rathlev said in a statement. “It’s a strong sign of long-term confidence in our city and in South Florida’s growth.”

The 25-story building has a 19K SF terrace and green space that overlooks Palm Beach Island, a Greek-style restaurant named Estiatorio Milos, retail space and offices, according to its website.

Related Cos. purchased the site in 2021 for $20M from the First Church of Christ Scientist, West Palm Beach, according to the Vizzda database, before Related Ross spun off into its own West Palm Beach-focused development company led by Ross in 2024. 

One Flagler was the first building to open under Related Ross.

Bisnow/Chloe Gallivan

The Related Ross showroom within the Shops at CityPlace in West Palm Beach illustrates the development plans for the city.

The company, which has 1M SF of office space under construction, spearheaded West Palm Beach’s development — especially after Ross pledged to spend $10B to turn the city into the “Wall Street of the South.”

But the company is looking to claim multiple titles for the region. Related Ross Vice President of Leasing Greg Kuhlman said at a Bisnow event in 2024 that the company was working to expand beyond financial service firms to technology companies and make West Palm the “next Silicon Valley.”

At another Bisnow event in December, Rathlev said the company’s next “big push” for West Palm Beach was in defense tech.

Other Related Ross developments have also attracted headquarters, like 10 and 15 CityPlace, which inked a deal with ServiceNow for 200K SF to host its regional headquarters in September.

Tech firm Visium also plans to open its headquarters at the 477 Rosemary boutique office building at Related’s CityPlace, The Real Deal reported.

Wells Fargo will reportedly sell its San Francisco headquarters and move its central operations in the city to another building as it shifts its power base to New York City.

Wells Fargo’s headquarters at 420 Montgomery St. in San Francisco.

The banking giant could put the 409K SF office at 420 Montgomery St. on the market this month, sources told The Wall Street Journal, which reported Wells Fargo has already begun informal discussions with possible buyers. 

Wells Fargo hired the real estate investment bank Eastdil Secured as an adviser on the sale. A spokesperson told the WSJ the bank routinely evaluates its real estate portfolio “to ensure we are best meeting the needs of employees and customers, responding to consumer and economic trends, and managing our costs responsibly.”

The bank is set to move its headquarters to 333 Market St., where it recently renewed its lease.

The sale would further a steady shift away from San Francisco to the East Coast over the past several years.

Wells Fargo has grown its footprint in New York City since it hired CEO Charlie Scharf in 2019. Scharf is based in the city and has built out the bank there, announcing plans to expand its Hudson Yards footprint in late 2023.

The bank also has a substantial presence in Charlotte, which has featured its biggest employee base since it bought Wachovia in 2008.

Wells Fargo is launching a competition for ambitious ideas as part of a $1B pledge to tackle what it sees as the national housing affordability crisis.

The banking giant is partnering with affordable housing nonprofit Enterprise Community Partners on the Housing Affordability Breakthrough Challenge. The national competition is aimed at finding innovative and scalable solutions to matters like construction costs, financing and resident services.

The challenge would award six $2M grants, and Enterprise will offer two years of advisory services to assist in implementing the winning proposals. Responses for the first round of requests for proposals are due by Feb. 19. Finalists would then be narrowed down over two additional rounds, and the six grant recipients will be announced this summer. 

“What we know and realize is that the housing crisis in this country is large and a heavy lift,” Wells Fargo Foundation Senior Vice President of Housing Affordability Philanthropy Connie Wright said. “We can’t solve it alone.”

The Wells Fargo and Enterprise partnership is the latest in a string of private sector pledges to address the U.S. housing crisis.

Facebook and Google announced independent $1B initiatives to address the housing crisis in their home state of California, where consulting firm McKinsey estimates the housing shortage costs the state $140B annually in lost economic output. Microsoft pledged $500M in early 2019 to support affordable housing development in Seattle. 

Bank of America has pledged $5B to assist low-income and multicultural households in buying a home. Merged banks BB&T and SunTrust — now named Truist — have committed $30M to an affordable housing campaign in Charlotte, North Carolina, where the company is based.

The proposals Wells Fargo and Enterprise are seeking would cover single-family and/or multifamily housing and address one of three key areas: housing construction, housing financing, and resident services and support. 

“We recognize that a home is more than the walls of a house, so supporting promising practices related to services and other support for individuals and families is absolutely critical,” Enterprise Community Partners Senior Vice President of National Initiatives Melinda Pollack said. 

Nonprofits, for-profit entities and Tribally Designated Housing Entities are invited to enter submissions addressing all parts of the country. While pricey metropolitan areas like San Francisco and New York City garner the most headlines for their lack of affordable housing, Wells Fargo and Enterprise are calling for submissions aimed at urban and rural affordability. 

“We wanted to reach all areas throughout the country,” Wright said. “We recognize the challenges are different between urban and rural areas, but both are in tremendous need and support of solutions.”

Beyond the biggest cities, there is a growing affordability problem in rural America. A little more than 47% of renters in rural areas are cost-burdened, meaning they spend more than a third of their income on housing, according to the Housing Assistance Council.

Fifty-four million residents in the rural communities are in areas identified in “most severe” or “moderately severe” need for more housing, according to the Urban Institute.

When Wells Fargo announced its $1B pledge in June 2019, the financial firm said it was to address homelessness, available and affordable rentals, transitional housing and homeownership. The Housing Affordability Breakthrough Challenge is part of a $20M initiative within the pledge to discover rapid ways to increase and sustain the affordable housing stock nationwide. 

While industry analysts welcome private sector pledges to step up to combat affordable housing, many are skeptical over how effective some of them will be. 

“The tech companies are throwing money at problems centered in markets where they have unintentionally helped create the issues,” Berkadia Senior Director Gemma Geldmacher told Bisnow. “It’s great for those markets, but it seems too little in too small of an area or maybe even too much in too small an area.”

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said at a Bisnow event in October the $1B tech pledges in the Bay Area weren’t enough to solve the housing crisis in her own community. According to a 2018 federal study on affordable housing costs per unit, $40.5B is needed to build the 54,000 units of affordable housing needed in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties in the Bay Area. The entire nine-county Bay Area needs nearly 188,000 housing units, according to a report in the Silcon Valley Business Journal. 

But Geldmacher sees merit in some of the national pledges like Wells Fargo’s, because they address the entire housing industry and the methods of production. 

“If we see more companies like Wells Fargo do what they are doing, and some similar companies nationwide that have a stake in improving the affordable housing process and delivery, I think that is more apt to move the needle,” she said. “I hope they are starting a trend here where, in 12 or 24 months, we can say they’ve started something people pick up and run with.”

Wells Fargo’s Wright and Enterprise’s Pollack anticipate submissions to address problems currently limiting affordable housing production like construction costs, a limitation on government subsidies and financing practices. 

“We have high hopes that we are going to see some innovative ideas that can efficiently scale,” Pollack said. 

While Wells Fargo’s pledge is currently slated to run through 2025, Wright acknowledges that finding solutions to affordable housing and then turning those into an actual practice won’t happen quickly. 

“There is a tremendous amount of opportunity around housing affordability right now, but it does take time to turn this big ship around to be a success,” she said. “We want to make sure those in this space understand it will take time to nurture the relationship and provide the technical assistance necessary to see the fruits of the labor.”