CINCINNATI—Ever since hitting a low point in 2009 the industrial market in the Cincinnati region has steadily climbed back to health. After a stellar 2014 the vacancy rate in this year's first quarter sank to a historic low, according to a new report by CBRE. Furthermore, the healthy level of positive absorption has convinced several developers to kick off several significant speculative developments.

“Out of the 30 largest US industrial markets we have the second lowest availability rate in the US behind Orange County, CA,” Tim Schenke, vice president in CBRE's Cincinnati office, tells GlobeSt.com. The market just hit a historically low rate of 4.8%, down from the previous record of 5.0% set in the third quarter of 2014. The largest transaction in the first quarter was Gorilla Glue's purchase of the 1.1 million square-foot Gateway 75 building at 2101 E. Kemper Rd. in Sharonville, OH, for $22.4 million. That and several other big deals helped push the quarter's positive absorption to 1.3 million square feet, continuing a positive streak that now goes back five years.

“We are right on pace for five million square feet of net absorption in 2015,” Schenke says. If it seems a bit surprising that a market with such a low vacancy rate could continue absorbing that much, he points out that new construction has returned to the region.