Downtown Summit comments...
Gib Kerr, vice president at Cushman & Wakefield, said downtown has seen a major influx of residents over the past decade and if current rates continue, should reach 30,000 residents by 2020. It currently has about 25,000 residents, twice the population of downtown Austin, Texas, he said.
Well that's Greater Downtown between State Line and 71Hway to 31st, anyone have River Market to Xroads pops?
Kerr estimated 2.3 million square feet of former downtown office space has been converted to apartments and hotel space over the last three years, roughly the size of the Sprint Campus.
Besides Auto Alert, other major recent office deals including the federal General Services Administration, 140,000 square feet; Spring Venture Group, 130,000 square feet; Hollis + Miller, 33,000 square feet, and WeWork, 44,000 square feet.
And will probably continue to be difficult to attract large tenants (over 1K employees) downtown given free parking in the burbs and not great metro transit. But looks like a 400 employee law firm considering downtown, might be Crown Center given another tenant about that size moving into CBD...
Johnson said he’s currently representing a firm with 400 employees that’s interested in relocating from Kansas to downtown and is optimistic the deal will happen.
John Southward of Hollis + Miller said relocating to the Corrigan Station project proved popular with his employees. “Our younger staff embraced it,” he said. “They live in the River Market and take the streetcar here. It’s been fantastic.”
Would be good to hear what % live downtown.
One of the more interesting debates among the panelists was the need for parking downtown. Johnson of Colliers said it was still essential to provide adequate parking to attract tenants, saying “I think parking could be a deal stopper going forward.”
Indeed.
On Cerner not choosing downtown...
“In our conversations with Cerner, the CEO (the late Neal Patterson) was focused on a suburban development,” Schulte said. “He didn’t see his organization interested in downtown. He wanted parking and wanted to be to his suburban home in 15 minutes.”
https://cityscenekc.com/developers-conf ... o-tighten/