The defense industry has provided a boost to the office market in Dayton, Ohio. But the addition of two new office buildings to the market means that the overall office vacancy rate here remained unchanged during the second quarter.
That’s the takeaway from the second quarter Dayton office report recently released by Colliers International.
According to Colliers, the office vacancy rate stood at 21.3 percent in the Dayton market during the second quarter. That’s the same rate that this market saw in the first quarter of the year. The vacancy rate, though, looks a bit better when you consider that two new office buildings were added to Dayton’s inventory during the quarter.
CareSource opened its new 250,000-square-foot office building at 122 N. Jefferson St. in downtown Dayton, while the renovation of an historic building at 607 E. 3rd St. added 35,000 square feet of new office space to the market. A total of 29,000 square feet of that second building has been leased.
During the second quarter, net absorption totaled 225,808 square feet in Dayton. That brings the year-to-date total to nearly 295,000 square feet of office absorption.
Office activity was mixed in Dayton’s suburban markets. The East submarket posted positive net absorption of 17,302 square feet, making for a year-to-date total of 94,016 square feet. Vacancy in this market has fallen since the beginning of the year by 70 basis points to 17.9 percent.
CACI, Inc. leased 18,567 square feet at Wright Executive Center while Serco leased 17,000 square feet at The Acropolis at Fairfield Commons.
In the South submarket, Teradata completed its move to San Diego, leaving behind its building at 10000 Innovation Way in the Austin Landing development. This move contributed to the submarket’s negative net absoprtion of 65,043 square feet in the second quarter. The vacancy rate in this submarket rose from 17.2 percent to 18.9 percent.
Colliers reported that there is 404,000 square feet of office space now under construction in the Dayton market. Most of this activity, though, is limited to smaller build-to-suit proejcts.
The average asking rental rate in the Dayton office market hit $15.23 a square foot. That is a small increase of 0.3 percent when compared to the second quarter of last year. Rent growth has been strongest in the East submarket, where the average asking rent of $22.29 a square foot represents an increase of 6.7 percent over last year.
