Should you size your Denver office to average attendance or peak attendance?

Size to your real peak, not your average. Most companies downsize to average daily attendance, then watch the office sit empty Monday and Friday and run oversold Tuesday through Thursday. The numbers explain why: building utilization now runs around 53%, but the global occupancy ratio sits at 111%, meaning companies have assigned more people than they have seats, and roughly 40% of buildings cannot handle a peak day. The fix is to size to your true peak and capture the cost savings through lease structure and concessions, not through square footage you will regret in eighteen months.

By Brian McCririe | June 11, 2026

Here's the mistake I watch Denver companies make over and over. The CFO pulls the badge data, sees the building averages 50% full across the week, and concludes the company needs half the space. Cut the footprint in half, bank the savings, done.

Then Tuesday comes. Everyone shows up. There aren't enough desks, the conference rooms are double-booked by 9 a.m., and the open seating turns into a game of musical chairs. By Friday the place is a ghost town again.

Average looked like the answer. Average was the trap.

You don't run a business on the average day. You run it on the peak day. Size for the average and you have built an office that fails exactly when your people actually need it.

Why average attendance is the wrong number to size on

The logic of sizing to average feels airtight. You measured utilization, you found roughly half the seats empty on a typical day, so you cut to match. The problem is that "average" smooths over a pattern that matters more than the mean.

Hybrid attendance in 2026 is not flat. It spikes midweek and collapses at the bookends. About 89% of companies now run a formal hybrid program, and for roughly 67% of occupiers hybrid is the direct driver behind expected footprint contraction. That program is what creates the Tuesday-through-Thursday peak and the Monday-Friday trough in the first place.

So when you average it out, you get a number that describes no actual day of the week. You size to a fiction, and the real days punish you for it.

The data backs up how far this has drifted. Across occupiers:

• Building utilization has climbed to roughly 53%, up from 38% in 2024 and 35% in 2023. People are coming back, and the trend line is pointing up, not down.
• The global occupancy ratio now sits at 111%, up from 101% a year ago. That means companies have allocated more people than they have seats, betting that not everyone shows up at once.
• Roughly 61% of companies say their buildings can handle a peak day. About 40% say they cannot.

Read those three numbers together and the picture is clear. Utilization is rising, companies are already oversubscribed on seats, and a large share of them are getting caught on their busiest days. Sizing to average pours fuel on a fire that is already burning.

The math behind the 111% occupancy ratio

The occupancy ratio is the part most CFOs have not internalized yet, so it's worth slowing down on.

A ratio of 100% means one assigned person per available seat. A ratio of 111% means you have eleven people assigned for every ten seats. Companies do this deliberately, on the theory that hybrid keeps enough people home on any given day to make the seats work.

That theory holds on a Monday. It breaks on a Tuesday.

Here's the squeeze. Utilization at 53% is the weekly average. But a midweek peak in a hybrid office routinely runs well north of that average, often 70% or higher of headcount in the building on the same day. Stack a 111% occupancy ratio on top of a midweek surge and you have more bodies than seats on the exact days the company most needs to be together. That's how 40% of buildings end up unable to handle peak days. They were designed around the average and overbooked against it.

If you want to pressure-test how much space your headcount actually requires before you ever sign anything, that calculation is its own exercise, and I've written separately about how much space you actually need per employee in a hybrid model.

Size to peak, then capture savings in the structure, not the square footage

Here's where most of the advice you'll hear goes wrong. The market keeps telling occupiers to contract. And 57% of companies do expect their footprint to shrink over the next three years, up from 48% a year ago. The instinct to cut is real and often correct.

But cutting square footage is the crudest lever you have. Lock in too little space on a long term and you cannot undo it without subleasing your way out, taking a haircut, or eating a second move. Square footage is the decision you can least afford to get wrong, because it is the hardest to reverse.

The better play in Denver's 2026 market is to size the space to your real peak, then go capture the savings somewhere reversible.

That somewhere is the lease structure. Denver's office market is handing occupiers the richest concession environment in a generation, and concessions, not square footage, are where you bank the cost reduction:

• Free rent (abatement). The Denver baseline is running roughly one month of free rent per year of term. On a longer downtown deal, that compounds into serious dollars off your effective cost.
• Tenant improvement allowance. TI is running anywhere from about 25% to 150% of one year's base rent, depending on term and credit. Funded build-out is real money the landlord puts in so you don't have to.
• Net effective rent. Once you run the free rent and TI through the full term, the real cost of a Denver office deal lands roughly 25% to 35% below the face rate on the quote.

Take the savings there. You hold the right amount of space for the days that matter, and you still cut your occupancy cost by a wide margin, without betting the company on a footprint you'll regret.

Why Denver's market makes this the moment to get it right

This isn't an abstract design problem. It plays out against a Denver market that is split in two, and the submarket you're in changes both the leverage and the answer.

Downtown Denver office vacancy hit a record near 38.9% in the first quarter of 2026, with the suburbs softer too, around 28%. When that much space sits empty, landlords compete on concessions, which is exactly the environment that lets you size to peak and still cut cost.

Cherry Creek is the opposite. Vacancy there is under 5%, the tightest submarket in the metro. There you have far less concession room, so getting the size right matters even more, because you won't make up a sizing mistake in the structure.

The decision in front of you is rarely a simple cut. It's a sizing-and-timing question, and whether to downsize, sublease, or hold in place depends on your peak, your term, and your submarket. I've laid out that broader decision in more detail on whether to downsize, sublease, or hold, and it connects directly to this one.

Frequently asked questions

Should I size my office to average daily attendance or peak attendance?

Size to your peak. Average attendance smooths over the Tuesday-through-Thursday surge that defines a hybrid week, so an office built for the average runs empty Monday and Friday and oversold midweek. With building utilization around 53% on a weekly average but peak days running much higher, and a global occupancy ratio of 111%, sizing to average leaves you short on the exact days your people are in.

What is a global occupancy ratio and why does 111% matter?

The occupancy ratio is the number of people assigned per available seat. At 111%, companies have allocated eleven people for every ten seats, betting that hybrid keeps enough people home each day to make it work. That bet holds on a slow day and breaks on a peak day, which is a major reason roughly 40% of buildings now say they cannot handle their busiest days.

If I shouldn't cut square footage, how do I actually save money?

Capture the savings in the lease structure instead of the footprint. In Denver right now, free rent is running about one month per year of term, TI allowances range from roughly 25% to 150% of one year's base rent, and net effective rent lands about 25% to 35% below the face rate. Those levers cut your real cost without locking you into a footprint that fails at peak.

Does this advice change between downtown Denver and Cherry Creek?

Yes. Downtown vacancy near 38.9% gives you deep concession room, so you can size to peak and still bank savings in the structure. Cherry Creek, under 5% vacancy, offers far less concession room, which makes getting the size exactly right more important because you can't recover a sizing mistake through the lease terms.

How much should I trust my badge-swipe utilization data?

Use it, but read it for the peak, not the average. Badge data is most useful when you isolate your busiest day and your busiest hour, because that's the load your space has to carry. A weekly average around 53% can look like a mandate to cut in half, when the Tuesday peak is telling you to hold most of what you have.

The bottom line

The companies getting Denver office sizing wrong are usually doing it with good data and bad framing. They measure the average, size to the average, and discover too late that the business runs on the peak. Utilization is climbing toward 53% and still rising, occupancy ratios already sit at 111%, and 40% of buildings can't handle a peak day, which means the cost of undersizing is going up, not down. Size to your real peak, then take your savings out of the lease structure where free rent, TI, and net effective rent can cut your cost 25% to 35% without locking you into space you'll regret.

This is the analysis I run with every occupier before we look at a single floor plan: what's your true peak, what term fits it, and which submarket gives you the leverage to cut cost without cutting the space you need. Sizing and lease economics shift quarter to quarter, so confirm any structure against your own counsel and CFO before you commit, and treat nothing here as a guaranteed outcome.

If you're working through a lease decision in Denver, whether that's a renewal, a relocation, or a footprint question your CFO is pushing on, I'm happy to run the numbers with you. Schedule a conversation at calendly.com/mccririe.

About Brian McCririe
Brian McCririe is Managing Director of SVN | Denver Commercial and National Council Chair for Occupier Services across the SVN network. After 25 years representing tenants and investors across global markets, he now focuses on the Denver Metro area helping companies navigate leases, acquisitions, and the gap between what landlords offer and what occupiers deserve. He leads one of the metro's top tenant rep practices and writes about the deals, decisions, and market shifts that matter to corporate real estate leaders.