WICHITA, KS—The Opus Group recently began construction on a new headquarters for Cargill's North America protein business. The developer plans to complete construction of the 190,000-square-foot office building in October 2018. It's far too early to tell, but the project could be a sign that the wave of new office construction, which so far has mostly been concentrated in core cities like Chicago, could soon arrive in secondary and tertiary markets like Wichita.

“The last few years, the office construction market has been pretty quiet,” Tim Callahan, senior project manager, Opus Design Build, LLC, tells GlobeSt.com. The Minneapolis-based Opus has been quite busy, however, in many metro areas. There has been, for example, an especially robust demand for new luxury apartments. “But the office sector has been slower to come back.” When it comes to offices in smaller cities, “we've done several projects in the past few years, but nothing compared to what the market was like 15 years ago.”

The Wichita project shares a lot of qualities with much of the most-popular class A office spaces in core cities. It's located in a historic neighborhood of converted brick warehouses, always a plus for today's office workers, and will help revive this portion of the downtown. Furthermore, the design by HOK will fit into the Old Town area's style and personality, says Callahan.