INDIANAPOLIS—Indianapolis has been one of the few Midwest cities to see a steady in-migration of new residents, including many millennials, which experts say will give a boost to its office market, especially the historic structures in the CBD that most appeal to the younger workforce. Investors are taking notice. Cushman & Wakefield-Summit just closed the sale of the Century Building, a 153,849 square-foot office building in the CBD at 36 S. Pennsylvania St.

It was built as a warehouse in 1901, but converted to office use in 1984. C&W-Summit marketed the property for the seller, Chicago-based Zeller Realty Group. Beloit, WI-based Hendricks Commercial Properties purchased the building for $13.85 million, or about $90 per square-foot.

“The Century Building is firmly embedded in the historic class of buildings that is in high demand from companies recruiting millennials,” says Tristan Glover, vice president of Zeller. “As workers increasingly prefer to live and work downtown, we are seeing companies view a downtown location as a vital component to their company's growth.”

The tech company Salesforce.com anchors the Century property. Other tenants include Denison Parking, Tin Roof and Princeton One Search. The C&W-Summit team was led by capital markets vice president Alex Cantu, and office advisory partners Matt Langfeldt and Rich Forslund.

The Indianapolis office market showed solid growth in 2014, according to a recent report from JLL. The region also saw 3.5-million-square-feet of investment activity. LaSalle Investment Management/Global Property Investment Fund, for example, purchased the Precedent Office Park, a 21-building office complex in the Keystone submarket. Furthermore, other class A downtown properties like the 515,000-square-foot Market Tower and the 705,292-square-feet Regions Tower changed hands during 2014.

As reported in GlobeSt.com, the C&W group also recently engineered the $14.3 million sale of 8909 Purdue Rd., also known as College Park Plaza, a 180,637-square-foot class A office building located in Indianapolis's Northwest submarket.

2015 promises more of the same. This recovery is not “just for the global gateway cities,” Kevin Thorpe, chief economist for the Americas for DTZ, tells GlobeSt.com. “This could be the year of the secondary markets.”

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Brian J. Rogal

Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.