Boost NOI with 5 Supplemental Revenue Strategies (BOMA 2025)

Key Takeaways

• Maximizing net operating income (NOI) requires some innovative thinking beyond rent increases.
• There are several things you can do to enhance asset value and use your vacant space to drive revenue.
• Explore building uses you might not have thought of, like agriculture and the film industry.

Whether your vacancy rates are high or low, there’s always room for growth—even if you’re managing a 100% occupied building. But that growth can’t always come from rent increases, especially when you need to keep rents similar to other buildings in the neighborhood. Shell Turner, property manager with Bridger Properties, encouraged property managers to explore new tenants and ways to get more use out of existing spaces in her Sunday presentation at the 2025 BOMA International Conference & Expo.

1. Film

It can be beneficial to court this multi-billion-dollar industry, Turner said. “If you’ve ever had one of those large vacancies where at some point a tenant has left and it was somebody’s great idea to leave all the furniture behind, as if design hasn’t changed every five minutes, and now you’re sitting on a mahogany desk, pink granite, and carpeted walls?” Turner said. “Turns out the film industry wants it. It’s a period piece, and they don’t have to pay an intern to google what it was like in the ‘80s. No research needed.”

The TV show The Office rented out its set in a real office building, Turner pointed out. The show also needed storage space, a place to feed the cast and crew, and a parking area, generating even more revenue for the building’s owner over the nine seasons of the show.

Spaces that are “white-boxed”—nothing on the walls or in the space—can also come in handy because they’re a flexible blank slate for film, TV, and commercial makers to build exactly what they need.

Reach out to people looking for spaces to film by listing your space on sites like LocationsHub, Film Locations Wanted, The Location Guide, and CAST Locations. These places are like Zillow for the film industry, Turner explained. Upload information and photos of your site in different seasons so producers can picture what they’re looking for.

You’ll also want to consider things like:

• What amenities does your building have, and what’s available nearby? The cast and crew will need to eat and park somewhere.
• Do you need any permits? Listing sites can help you figure out what you need to contact your local municipality about.
• Should you adjust your insurance coverage? This is especially important when you’re working with smaller studios on commercials or other lower-budget productions.

2. Data Centers

When you think of a data center, you may be thinking of a huge facility built out for one company. But that’s not the whole story when it comes to data centers, Turner said. “Your Ring doorbell, your Samsung refrigerator—all of that data is being held somewhere, and they want it to be as close to the user as possible,” she explained.

Data centers aren’t just in expansive rural areas either, she added. They can be in major metropolitan areas too.

Attracting data centers requires careful attention to four considerations:

• Power and cooling: The power grid is out of your control, but you need to make sure you’re in a place with a robust enough system to handle the power a data center requires to operate—and you need to think about an enormous amount of backup power to match. You’ll also need to think about the cost of power in your area, whether the power supplied is clean, and how reliable the grid is. Cooling is also a major concern—data center temperatures need to stay much lower than an office or another building type.
• Connectivity: If you’re retrofitting an older building as a data center, you’ll need to clean up all of the old wiring in your walls. The new tenant is going to want a clean slate for networking, Turner said. They’ll also want to know what type of management platform you use for the building; typically, the tenant will want their own system that’s separate from yours, but it should be capable of talking to your system. Hire an IT specialist for this, Turner urged.
• Security and safety: “The facility security we already have needs to be three times more robust,” Turner said. Guards need to check visitors’ identification closely, and you’re also looking at a technology investment for better cameras and other critical security systems. Other concerns include fire and life safety, as well as temperature control and access to generators. “How is the building protecting that data that’s sitting there?” Turner asked. “You can’t have any hiccups or have a building shutdown to test your systems without coordinating with these people in advance. A second will cost them hundreds of millions of dollars.”
• Compliance. Reach out to governing bodies, like your local government and the Uptime Institute, for information about standards that apply to data centers.

3. Event Space

“We’ve put hundreds of thousands of dollars into making spaces that are beautiful, and then not allowed anybody but overworked office workers to look at it—and they don’t,” Turner said. “Why don’t we cash in on that? Even if our tenants use them Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., people can take tenant amenity areas and lease them out for corporate events.”

Think about opening up your amenity spaces for weddings or hosting a farmer’s market in your parking lot, Turner suggested. Have a pickleball court or another community sport area no one is using? Reach out to your local YMCA or amateur sports league and broker a deal.

Consider these factors before you open your doors to the community:

• Permitting and licensing: “You can’t just have a certain number of people show up and pay you for it,” Turner said. “You need to have your occupancy buttoned up for that amenity area.” If you’re going to serve alcohol in your amenity space, you also need to make sure whoever is serving it has the right license in place.
• Space design: The path of travel should be just as beautiful and accessible as the amenity area itself.
• Storage: If your guests are going to move your furnishings or other elements around—say, during a wedding—make sure you have a place to store those items.

4. Parking

Paid parking is growing, and this trend is partially due to the growth of technologies facilitating easier parking monetization, Turner said. License plate reader cameras and a sign with a QR code will help you get started charging for parking. New systems handle the billing and other issues on your behalf.

Before you start charging people for parking, however, Turner recommended thinking about these important considerations:

• Dynamic pricing: Is there anything nearby that would warrant changing the price structure of your parking area during certain times, like when you have overflow from a nearby movie theater?
• Online booking: People love booking in advance, especially when they can register and pay for multiple days. Some parking systems will use your license plate readers to text parkers who haven’t visited your facility in a while and offer them a deal to park there again.
• Valet services: Some guests expect services like this, and you may decide to invest in it to keep up with what your visitors demand. “You also guarantee their parking within the lines—that’s not a guarantee for anyone else,” Turner said.
• Local partnerships: “Do your neighbors have overfill? Lend it out,” Turner said. “Does your retail across the street have a hard time with shipments and they have trucks blocking the way constantly? Even if it’s just for an hour or two, have that conversation and really market it. Be the place to go.”

5. Agriculture

There has been a real push for indoor hydroponic growing and vertical farming in urban centers, driven by climate change making traditional agriculture more difficult, Turner said. But before you convert your building into an agrotourism, urban farming, or community garden center, there are a lot of factors to think about.

• Where will you put it? The rooftop is a great location if it can handle the weight. You’d also have to make the path of travel more accessible so someone can go up there and take care of the crops. The roof will need extra waterproofing because irrigation is hard on roofs, and you’ll also have to think about the irrigation itself—the roof will need a water source to keep your crops alive.
• What’s your weather like? Rooftop farming is not a good idea for states that are cold most of the year or where hurricanes are common.
• Who will have access to the garden? Will you have a third-party vendor do all the harvesting, or is it a team-building activity for the people in your facility? Is there a restaurant in your building that will have access to it?
• How will you manage harvesting? “Now you’ve got boxes full of leafy greens. Are you telling them to take the stairs?” Turner asked. “You’ve got to think of something creatively on how to get them out of there.”

“Get started. Think curiously. Ask questions,” Turner said. “The only reason I talked to the film industry was because I like movies. We all have things we enjoy, and those things are in places. Bring them into your place.”