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The skeletal steel frame of an office building is taking shape at I-271 near Chagrin Boulevard in Beachwood. One's also visible at I-480 and Great Northern Boulevard in North Olmsted. And these skyline monuments are rising at many suburban locations in between.
The gradually warming embers of the suburban office development market have caught flame this year--and they promise to become a roaring fire if a plethora of proposed office buildings gets started.
Although that future phase may be a year off, the development pace in the suburbs for rental office buildings already is gaining speed. It exceeds anything seen since the real estate credit crunch and recession brought the suburban office market to a halt in 1991.
However, tenants who want a return of the sweet office deals of the late 1980s will have to wait.
"This is a boo without an 'm' on it," said Alec Pacella, client services manager of Grubb & Ellis Co. "Not since the late 1980s have we seen numbers like this."
Grubb & Ellis estimates 544,000 square feet of suburban office buildings are under construction, on top of another 83,000 square feet already completed this year. That over shadows 330,000 square feet of new buildings completed last year.
Major players are staking their claims with big projects.
Duke Realty Investments Inc., the Indianapolis-based real estate investment trust, is building in three suburban markets at once. It's a Duke building, with 68,000 square feet of offices, rising in North Olmsted. Also under construction is Park Center Plaza I, an office building in Independence with 140,000 square feet of office space that's due to open in December. That's being joined by Park Center Plaza II, a building of the same size that Duke began constructing last month.
Duke also is building Landerbrook II, a 103,300-square-foot building in Mayfield Heights that will open in December.
Duke launched all of the buildings on...