Suburban Office Holds Its Own

CHICAGO—As reported in GlobeSt.com last week, the office market in the CBD has been putting up some good numbers, showing solid improvement in its vacancy rate, level of absorption and the ability to attract investors. But the suburban region, long regarded as anemic and still losing some companies to downtown buildings, at least held its own in the third quarter, and has shown some signs of life, according to a new third quarter report just published by Newmark Grubb Knight Frank.

Although the firm found that the vacancy rate for the metro area rose to 17.6%, a rise of 20 bps since the last quarter, it attributed this increase largely to the addition of Motorola’s 1.2-million-square-foot suburban Libertyville campus to the leasing inventory. NGKF did not count this space as part of the available inventory when Motorola moved downtown in the first quarter because the firm does not count owner-occupied buildings. But BECO Management just purchased the campus and has begun marketing it for lease.