It could be. Lattimer suggests that North City's business expansion or relocation efforts may be driven in the future as much by economics as it has been driven in the past by the tendency to locate near the mother, UCSD, that spawned much of North City's private sector. What it costs them in terms of space, travel, time, etc. For that reason alone, Downtown will attract very strong tenant activity in the next few years. There's nowhere else in San Diego where you can get good space in excess of 20,000 square feet.
Absorption is supply driven.
Downtown has the supply, so will continue to see absorption. This Downtown market is going to come back quicker than anyone thinks. If you think how much office space was built in the 1980s, probably 20 million to 25 million square feet half of the whole county was built post-1982 and figure there isn't any new construction going on now, and realize how fast suburban vacancy rates have been dropping with rents rising, Downtown is going to recover very quickly as well. It's only apropos. With the primary exception of Cooley Godward, LLP, most of North City's legal, accounting and architectural support services are located in Downtown, having all the fun, because that's where most of the lawyers, accountants and architects were operating before high-tech was much of an economic engine in San Diego.