Wilmington leaders approved the latest lease this week in the Skyline Center.

HDR Engineering Inc. of the Carolinas plans to lease just over 4,100 square feet on the seventh floor of the city-owned Skyline Center. Approximately 13,000 square feet remains available for lease, with spaces on the building’s fourth, seventh and eighth floors, according to Julia Lackey, a senior vice president with Cape Fear Commercial. 

City officials purchased Skyline Center, the former PPD headquarters at 929 N. Front St., nearly three years ago for $68 million. Since then, city officials have executed several leases in the building.

Skyline Center tenants include Civic Federal Credit Union, Canadian rapid manufacturing firm Protocase, the Wilmington and Beaches Convention & Visitors Bureau, Thermo Fisher Scientific, startups Synply and Anza Mortgage Insurance Corp., along with engineering firms McKim & Creed and Black & Veatch.

On Tuesday, the Wilmington City Council authorized City Manager Becky Hawke to enter into a lease agreement with HDR. HDR is a global company specializing in architecture, engineering, environmental and construction services, according to its website. 

The company has more than 14,000 employees globally, with more than 200 offices, according to the website, including a location at 101 N. Third St., Suite 201, in Wilmington.

According to council agenda documents, HDR’s lease would have an initial term of five years, with two options to renew for another two years. Annual rent would start at $106,000 per year and increase annually.

“We’re really excited about getting HDR in the building,” Lackey said this week. “We’ve been working on that lease for quite some time, so (we’re) excited that it’s finally coming to fruition.”

According to Lackey, two 4,500-square-foot spaces remain available for lease – one on the building’s fourth floor and the other on the eighth floor. The other remaining spaces range between 1,500 and 2,000 square feet.

“It’s great news that we’ve gotten larger tenants in,” Lackey said, “but we do have smaller chunks left.”

Last fall, Skyline Center signed one of its largest leases when engineering firm McKim & Creed leased more than 22,000 square feet on the building’s eighth floor. Wilmington officials also authorized leasing the building’s entire ninth floor, a 30,085-square-foot area, to financial technology company ANZA Mortgage Insurance Corp. 

HDR is taking the last remaining large chunk of space on the seventh floor, Lackey said. The smaller spaces are seeing interest mainly from local businesses, she added.

“The office market in Wilmington is tight,” Lackey said, “and people also are excited about the Skyline building, so we have been able to work more locally in getting some smaller office users in the building.”

Working out of the same building as the city and among other like-minded businesses is attractive for prospective tenants, Lackey said. The office building’s larger 10,000- to 20,000-square-foot floor plates have also made the property stand out.

“That’s something that the Skyline building has offered that not a lot of other buildings in Wilmington can offer at this point, so we’ve had a lot of success with larger tenants,” Lackey said. “I think that national users and local office users alike do want to be in this building because the city of Wilmington is there, too.”

Correction: This version corrects the number of employees HDR has globally.