Downtown office space is 87 percent occupied (Pittsburgh, Taylor: 2013, lease, hotel)

[zman63]

The residential conversions have taken most of the lower class c type buildings off of the market. The Class B and A buildings have reaped the benefits.


Pittsburgh?s residential conversions are placing premium on remaining office space - Pittsburgh Business Times

[WhoIsStanwix?]

Do you have anything useful to add? It is well established that Class A space is in high demand within the Golden Triangle, and vacancy rates are rather low. I am not sure how you can take from that because there is less Class C space, that Class A and B benefit. Quite the opposite, one would think that if Class A and B office space were in high demand, that the demand for Class C space has seen the true benefit. Indeed, I think you can draw that conculsion, as the Class C (and some class B) spaces are seeing demand increase, albeit in the form of residential conversions.

At a minimum, most will agree that downtown has a shortage of the following:

1. Class A Space
2. Residential Space
3. Hotel Space

The degree of shortage may be subject to varying opinions.

I will add to that I think a more effecient bus depot/transportation hub, riverfront development and a grocery store are the other major lacking elements that keep downtown from being even more vibrant than it is now.

[gortonator]

.....(cricket noises) .....

[speagles84]

Originally Posted by gortonator

.....(cricket noises) .....

...ribbet ribbet...

[zman63]

Originally Posted by WhoIsStanwix?

Do you have anything useful to add? It is well established that Class A space is in high demand within the Golden Triangle, and vacancy rates are rather low. I am not sure how you can take from that because there is less Class C space, that Class A and B benefit. Quite the opposite, one would think that if Class A and B office space were in high demand, that the demand for Class C space has seen the true benefit. Indeed, I think you can draw that conculsion, as the Class C (and some class B) spaces are seeing demand increase, albeit in the form of residential conversions.

At a minimum, most will agree that downtown has a shortage of the following:

1. Class A Space
2. Residential Space
3. Hotel Space

The degree of shortage may be subject to varying opinions.

I will add to that I think a more effecient bus depot/transportation hub, riverfront development and a grocery store are the other major lacking elements that keep downtown from being even more vibrant than it is now.

I thought it was a pretty positive article. I am not sure why you became so sensitive. 87 percent of the total office space occupied in downtown is a small miracle.

[WhoIsStanwix?]

Originally Posted by zman63

I thought it was a pretty positive article. I am not sure why you became so sensitive. 87 percent of the total office space occupied in downtown is a small miracle.

Ok, I'll take the bait.

1. You offered zero contrsructive commentary on the article. This is a theme with other posts. By the way, the article is about 6 months old.

2. I disagreed with the notion that the direction of cause and effect was captured correctly in the article. I think that lower quality space has benefited from the demand of higher quality space. The article (and your brief comment in the OP) deem the opposite.

3. There have been various discussions on this topic. One of them, citing the same source website, same writer, but different article, can be found here:

//www.city-data.com/forum/pitts...ce-market.html

The point is, this is a "discussion board", I think. This would mean discussions should take place, or dialogue. That generally means discussing a topic, not just posting news articles at random. You could at least say, "hey, here's a news article, what do you think?"

Posting a link and nothing more is generally a pretty lazy way to go about discussing.

[gortonator]

^^^^ that's why it's best to let crickets reply in these threads ...

ribbet, ribbet ...

[zman63]

Originally Posted by WhoIsStanwix?

Ok, I'll take the bait.

1. You offered zero contrsructive commentary on the article. This is a theme with other posts. By the way, the article is about 6 months old.

2. I disagreed with the notion that the direction of cause and effect was captured correctly in the article. I think that lower quality space has benefited from the demand of higher quality space. The article (and your brief comment in the OP) deem the opposite.

3. There have been various discussions on this topic. One of them, citing the same source website, same writer, but different article, can be found here:

//www.city-data.com/forum/pitts...ce-market.html

The point is, this is a "discussion board", I think. This would mean discussions should take place, or dialogue. That generally means discussing a topic, not just posting news articles at random. You could at least say, "hey, here's a news article, what do you think?"

Posting a link and nothing more is generally a pretty lazy way to go about discussing.

The biggest reason I see for the tightening of the class A office space is UPMC taking over the US Steel tower and kicking out other tenants. PPG, Oxford, Old National City bldg and the Grant building have been filling up due to this. Also, there has been a plethora of smaller office buildings in bankruptcy, being vacated and turned to residential. The office to residential has had a huge impact on the amount of all office space available. The old buildings on Penn Ave and Wood streets are becoming mostly residential.

I believe they only classify 16 downtown buildings as class A office space. Unfortunately the most recent data for Class B office space, which would be the Gulf Tower, Koppers Bldg., lawyers bldg and the alike, was from june of 2012 and had vacancy rates of 29 percent....

Plenty of B class space available in Downtown Pittsburgh - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

[markson33]

The classification of buildings is subjective. There are really only 7-10 class "A" buildings in the city - and even some of those aren't really class "A" in the true sense. We speak of the US Steel Tower as class "A" ( and it does have quality space), but the building is 40 years old and would be class "B" in most first tier markets. The Lawyers building is a class "C" building.

Depending on how the numbers are skewed and classified you can make them say anything you want.

The reality is that the Pittsburgh office market is doing extremely well. Class "B" space does probably have a vacancy rate in the low-mid teens, but many of those buildings have some sort of functional obsolescence that may make them more difficult to lease. Other buildings, like the Clark Building, Reed Smith building and Lord & Taylor show up as vacant office space, but are not actually available.

[pman]

looks like pittsburgh ranked 17th which is pretty respectable for pa.
September 2013 standings for On Numbers Economic Index - The Business Journals