NAI Saig to Leave Downtown for East Memphis

Commercial real estate firm NAI Saig Co. will move to East Memphis this March, leaving its longtime home in Downtown’s One Commerce Square office building.

NAI Saig will leave its nearly 3,000-square-foot space on the 17th floor of One Commerce at 40 S. Main for a similarly sized space at 5860 Ridgeway Center Parkway in Boyle Investment Co.’s Ridgeway Business Center.

The move isn’t a large one – NAI Saig only has about five people in the office consistently, said NAI Saig Business Manager and Vice President Hank Martin. But for a company that has been in the same building since the 1980s, the move shows just how far east the business center of Memphis has moved in recent decades.

Only about 10-15 percent of the company’s business is done Downtown, Martin said. That means brokers are spending as much as 45 minutes in the car per roundtrip to visit just one of their listed properties.

"If you talk to every firm I know of that has moved from Downtown to out east," Martin said, "every one of them will say the same thing, which is ‘We liked being Downtown. We liked it better than being out east. It’s just because in our business, where we come and go, we need to be out east.’"

NAI Saig broker Brian Califf added: "That’s where we need to be to access our listings and hire new brokers."

For companies with office-bound employees, Downtown is the easy choice, Martin said.

"For the right component, Downtown is the best," Martin said. "No location is the right location for everybody."

NAI Saig’s director and president, Eddie Saig, made the decision to move despite living in West Memphis. He’ll continue commuting to the new office, Martin said.