Will the Signature Tower signal trouble for existing office space?
Commercial real-estate agents, at least those hawking office space in existing properties, can’t be excited to hear the news that the Signature Tower is rightsizing by eliminating half of its condos in favor of other tenants:
Developer Tony Giarratana plans to eliminate more than half of the condos in his proposed 70-story skyscraper, Signature Tower, in a bid to find financing for the project amid a weak real estate market. Giarratana said in an interview that he has decided to cut out 25 floors of condos and will replace them with another business — possibly offices or more hotel rooms — to keep the tower at its proposed height of more than 1,000 feet.
Given that there’s already an excess of vacant office space downtown, the addition of even more — and in a glamorous new building, no less — doesn’t bode well for anyone looking to fill current space. If the tower is built, will it come at the expense of other properties in town? Maybe not, since the economy may well have improved by the time tenants move into the tower (2011 at the earliest), but we’ll see.
May 20th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
I’m thinking that between the economy recovering by that point, plus the fact that the Signature Tower itself, plus a few other developments will also be bringing people with it/them, there will be plenty of demand to go around.
I hope.
May 21st, 2008 at 8:42 am
I hope you’re right, Paul. It is easy to think the sky is falling when the economy is in rough shape, but it typically doesn’t stay down for all that long (maybe 1-2 years, often less when you throw out all the worrying and focus on when the economy was actually stagnant). We’ll see.