DETROIT—The Detroit region's office market has been transformed in the past few years. Suburban firms have been leaving the suburbs in big numbers and settling in the CBD, which now pulses with activity. Once underutilized office buildings are now filled with workers, and many warehouse and other industrial structures adjacent to the CBD have been renovated into residential buildings. That story can be told in a set of statistics recently compiled by CBRE.

The firm found that just seven large contiguous office spaces, defined as larger than 50,000 square feet, remain available in the CBD, but 37 such spaces are available in the suburban submarkets. In suburban Southfield, the second largest submarket, 13 large spaces are available, the most of any submarket in the region.

The migration of suburban firms really began to accelerate about six or seven years ago, Paul Beitz, senior vice president of CBRE, tells GlobeSt.com, when numerous properties were bought by Bedrock Real Estate Services, a company run by Dan Gilbert, the chief of Quicken Loans. “He has been able to fill those buildings with his employees and to attract other companies. Much of the excitement about downtown comes from companies that have younger employees, many of whom like the urban environment.”