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Talk of the Bay

There's no room at the inn, office-wise

By JAMES THORNER
Published May 8, 2006

Cubicle dwellers rejoice: We're No. 2! The Tampa Bay area ranked second in the nation for its low rate of vacancy in top-quality suburban offices.

Researchers with the Colliers International real estate firm said Tampa-St. Petersburg's office vacancy in the suburbs stood at 6.3 percent at the end of first quarter 2006.

Driving the numbers were successes such as the fully leased 800,000-square-foot Highwoods Preserve business park in New Tampa.

Who beat us out for No. 1? Let's say it's not wise to bet against Las Vegas, which reduced its vacancy to 6 percent. The metro areas competed among 56 markets in the United States. Denver came in last at 37 percent.

Colliers needed to slice and dice a bit to come up with the results. The survey excluded downtown offices and less well-equipped class "B" and "C" offices.

Office vacancy in the region is about 10 percent, mostly unchanged from last year. Downtown office vacancy stood at 15 percent, higher than the national average.

But even in the downtown category, not all cities were created equal. Central St. Petersburg's 5.2 percent vacancy bested downtown Tampa's 15.4 percent.

In the case of Tampa, some companies have vacated downtown offices in favor of - you guessed it - the suburbs.

[Last modified May 8, 2006, 05:58:16]