Do nearby food trucks increase demand for office space?
An article from Portland earlier this week caught my eye.
As firms pile into downtown — it’s the most crowded commercial real estate area in the city (PDF) — researcher Patricia Raicht of Jones Lang LaSalle
has stumbled on a surprising trend. Downtown office buildings, she
says, consistently fill up faster when they’re close to food carts.
In the first six months of 2013, Raicht said, 92 percent of net
demand for high-quality downtown Portland office space occurred within
two blocks of a food cart pod.
“When our brokers are out talking to tenants, what they’re hearing
over and over again — and particularly with creative tenants and tenants
that have a younger demographic — is that there are a lot of things
that are really important to them,” Raicht said in a July interview
about the trends in net absorption rates for Class A and Class B office
space.
Bike Portland