CHICAGO—The office market in Chicago's CBD saw a bit of a slowdown in the first quarter, but a modest turnaround in the second has raised hopes that absorption in 2015 could at least approach the robust level in 2014, the city's best year since the year before the recession.

“It's hard to answer with any certainty,” MBRE's Sara Spicklemire, senior vice president and managing director of leasing services, tells GlobeSt.com, but since first and second quarters tend to be slower, perhaps the market could still see one million square feet absorbed by the end of this year.

The CBD saw 268,172 square feet of positive absorption in the second quarter, according to MBRE's just-published market overview, a welcome statistic considering that the market lost some ground in the first quarter. In 2014, the CBD saw more than 1.2 million square feet of positive absorption.

The vacancy rate sank to 13.49%, a drop of just 6 bps, and Spicklemire says people should not expect this number to get much lower for some time. “I think 13% is a good number for the Chicago market historically. I'd love to see it get back down to 11%,” but with the millions of square feet that are in the development pipeline, even a robust leasing environment would mean at best a slow decline in the overall vacancy rate. For now, MBRE is forecasting that the rate will remain largely the same in 2016.

The Central Loop and West Loop accounted for much of the new absorption, Spicklemire adds. And the fact that much of it was in the Central Loop's class B space illustrates several important shifts in the marketplace.

“We're seeing a lot of favorable momentum for the B market,” she says. For one thing, developers have begun transforming much of the area's class C office space into other uses such as hotels. 100 W. Monroe St., for example, a vintage Loop office building, is now a Hyatt. “Those tenants have to go somewhere,” and with a steadily improving economy, many have decided to trade up to class B space. In the second quarter, class B spaces in the Central Loop accounted for 123,034 square feet of absorption, versus just 12,236 square feet in class A offices.

But the B market is drawing strength from other sources as well, Spicklemire adds. Many of the tech firms that have made River North a home are in the midst of expansions, but the submarket has become incredibly tight, with a vacancy rate of just 5.0% among class A properties, and these companies have very few options. “They're probably going to end up in class B properties in the Loop.”

Next week: Spicklemire will discuss with GlobeSt.com why the worries about the opening of the new office towers next year, and the shadow space this could create in the CBD, may be overblown.