Downtown Office Leases

[ljbab728]

An interesting update on the current situation.

Oklahoma City office market seeing highs and lows | News OK

[ljbab728]

A new interesting update by Richard Mize on the current situation and outlook for the future.

http://www.oklahoman.com/article/5238792?embargo=1

Class A office space downtown is tighter than ever, and lease rates are at an all-time high, according to Price Edwards & Co.

Vacancy shrunk from 9.3 percent to 1.4 percent over the first half of 2014, sending average rents to a record $21.41 per square foot per year, the commercial realty firm reported in its midyear office market summary.

[hoya]

It would seem that this is the perfect time to build a tower with lots of spec class A space in it.

[bombermwc]

Before we go crazy, what is OG&E's construction going to do to that. If the building is prime for redevelopment, it could easily be gutted for new Class A. It's not a huge structure, but it's also not a little 4 story sucker either.

[Pete]

Whatever happens with the existing OG&E building, it won't be available for at least two and probably three years.

Think about how much has changed downtown in the last 2-3 years and how much momentum has picked up since.


Office space in particular is a like a large train... Very slow to stop (construction takes years to complete and often commences in very different market conditions) and very slow to get rolling again (previous gluts cause financing to dry up and then it takes years and years before anything new comes on-line).

The net result is that supply and demand are almost always mis-matched. And what we have now is a extreme need with supply years away.

It's really the financial institutions that are to blame, as they shut off when things get soft then take forever to loosen the purse strings again. Then, tons of developers all flood in at once. This is exactly what is happening in hotels and apartments, while condos and office projects have all been on hold.

[Bellaboo]

Before we go crazy, what is OG&E's construction going to do to that. If the building is prime for redevelopment, it could easily be gutted for new Class A. It's not a huge structure, but it's also not a little 4 story sucker either.

Steve's article suggested turning the old OGE building into housing.

[bombermwc]

Bellaboo - Im sure it did...that seems to be what everyone thinks every old building should be. The problem is that residential take a WHOLE LOT MORE work to get moving and requires a lot more to keep people happy once they are in there. I'm sure someone will say it needs to be upscale and it'll take them 10 years to get enough leases to start construction while we wait on historic credits and some other bullcrap and in the end it wont be half the project it was envisioned. Do we see a pattern here??? Hm. It's a lot easier to take a floor at a time and gut the place down to the studs and build it back out as you get new tenants. It's done all over OKC (like the old lucent plant) can make the building class A over night. Right now, I don't think id classify OG&E as class A...bleh.

Pete - that's still a faster turnaround than starting from scratch on a new tower. I'm all in favor of some more new construction to do some "filling in". I'm just cautious to think what could happen. I would hate to see us up at the 20%+ vacancy rate like we have seen. I still can't access the article, so I'm curious if the numbers showed what class B and C rates were like as well. We've still got an overabundance of that and with Devon vacating FNC just made it worse.

[JosephYost]

Does anyone know if First National Center has any openings for office space available? I went in there a couple months ago, and I wasn't able to see the girl who manages the property as she was on the phone with her boyfriend. I left my card for her with the receptionist, and we never heard back from her. They gave us permission to look around and I noticed that there are many empty floors. Does anyone have any idea what is going on?

[Soonerinfiniti]

While it appears that Jamie McCammon (405.235.5200) is the local leasing agent, Amy Dunn with CBRE (405.272.5305) is a contact for the possible sale of the property.

There is over 500,000 SF listed for lease from $12 - $14/SF (Full Service Lease) with tenant spaces available ranging from 100 SF to over 26,000 SF.

[jbkrems]

There are definitely open spaces in First National Center, but by chance when I went up to visit a certain office, the spaces I saw on the way were not fit or ready for use. If I wanted to lease space downtown, I would look elsewhere.