PCCP, LLC, a real estate finance and investment management firm, and TriStar, for example, last year formed a joint venture to acquire 45 acres of land for the speculative development of a 673,000-square-foot bulk warehouse building at the Gateway center in the Metro East area.

The office market also experienced a surge of large deals and netted 474,000-square-feet of positive absorption in the fourth quarter, bringing the year-end total to 680,000-square-feet, according to DTZ. The west suburban markets were particularly active. Asking rents for office space in Clayton, Creve Coeur and Chesterfield, for example, hit historic highs, and tenants have found it more difficult to rent large blocks of contiguous space.

Landlords of class A space have fared the best. It accounted for 65% of the total annual absorption and ended the 4th quarter with a vacancy rate of just 10% compared to class B's vacancy rate of 19.3%. And DTZ researchers feel new development could be on the way. “A lack of large contiguous blocks of space will continue to make build-to-suit options attractive for large tenants.”

Although much of the commercial activity in 2014 took place in the suburbs, this could change in 2015 after a public-private partnership completes its $380 million renovation of downtown's Gateway Arch. The project, called CityArchRiver 2015, will for the first time connect the CBD to the riverfront and the park surrounding the Arch with one continuous greenway.

For decades, office users and residents had been cut off from these amenities by a highway. And Peter G. Harwood, executive vice president of capital markets at JLL, told GlobeSt.com that once the project is done, “I think there is going to be a tremendous in-migration of people into the downtown.”