Commercial Klutch: March Edition

This month Chris Havens, director of commercial real estate at Aptsandlofts.com, takes a look at the office space squeeze in Williamsburg:

Williamsburg office space: Good luck finding it. With all the noise around residential blowing up and the open house crowds feeling like a Bushwick nightclub at 2 am, the demand for, and consequent lack of, office space in Williamsburg is a real estate and policy problem that won’t go away. Everyone wants to be in “Double U Bee.” But the best buildings for offices, multi-story warehouses, have almost all gone residential. And the older stock is mostly low rise, without the density of downtown Brooklyn or Dumbo.

The highest New York City office rents outside of Manhattan are in Williamsburg, where they range from $30 to $60 a square foot. Look to pay $50 per square foot if you want typical space, which in Brooklyn is less than 2,000 square feet. That’s way more than Dumbo, which is also sold out. It is best to take retail space several blocks away from Bedford, and that is competitive too.

All this is a problem, as it inhibits job growth, prevents locals from living near work, and reduces the daytime population of the area. The newest factor of competition is the gorilla tenants in the market like Amazon and Google. Word is a large Northside site is preleasing to huge tenants already. The market needs small tenant space.

Otherwise, how will the small tenant space become available in the face of record high residential rents, international companies seeking large footprints, and population growth?