Rents rose as demand for space increased. The market began to look up again in the mid-1990s. By Suryan's calculations, all this new construction and renovation amounts to about 4 million square feet in new office space, with roughly 2.4 million square feet on the Eastside. And in the last three years, the laws of supply and demand have created a huge escalation in rental rates. Suryan says they have almost doubled in some cases.
Cautious optimism guides development today.
Nobody today would move as quickly as the developers did in the late 1980s. Yet our economy is a funny thing. Today's lenders want developers with pre-leases. Hill expects some lenders will eventually grow weary of such companies. Miller wonders too.