NERC has nixed its goal of relocating its Atlanta office in 2022 after failing to negotiate a lease at the planned new location, CFO Andy Sharp said Wednesday.

Speaking at the November open meeting of NERC’s Finance and Audit Committee, Sharp said the organization was “not able to reach a mutual agreement” with the prospective landlord. NERC’s Board of Trustees gave permission in September for management to sign the lease for the new office and to amend its 2022 Business Plan and Budget to cover moving costs. (See NERC Board Approves Atlanta Office Move.)

NERC had planned to exercise the early termination clause in the lease for its current office in the Atlanta Financial Center, allowing the organization to leave the space by October 2022. Last month NERC received FERC’s approval to spend up to $2 million from its Operating Contingency Reserve to pay the fee for exercising the clause (RR20-6). (See FERC Approves Funding for NERC Office Move.) With the move canceled, NERC will stay at the Atlanta Financial Center until its lease ends in October 2025.

The new office location — which NERC’s management has not publicly revealed, citing the ongoing negotiations — would have charged significantly lower rent and offered several attractive amenities such as free employee parking and convenience to transportation and accommodation options for out-of-town visitors. In addition, its geographic footprint would have been about 40% smaller than NERC’s existing office, aligning with management’s desire to provide employees more flexible remote work options after the COVID-19 pandemic showed that staff could still execute their responsibilities while working from home.

Sharp acknowledged in Wednesday’s meeting that the collapse of negotiations means that the new lease and its promised benefits will not happen. However, he said that unspecified “incentives” that the organization negotiated with its current landlord will “help reduce our facility costs over the last several years of the lease.”

Those lower costs are not reflected in NERC’s 2022 Business Plan and Budget, which FERC approved on Tuesday. (See related story, FERC Approves ERO 2022 Budgets.) That document is based on the existing rent schedule for the Atlanta office. Sharp said any differences will be reconciled through NERC’s quarterly variance reports to the commission.

“We’ll take advantage of this time over the next couple of years to learn from the implementation of the new flexible workforce model and our collaborate-focused space in the Washington, D.C. office,” Sharp said. “And then we’ll evaluate what improvements would make sense in Atlanta and continue to design the best possible experience for our employees and stakeholders, with a focus on cost-effectiveness.”