Office space in West Palm Beach, a looming problem

From Jeff Ostrowski at the Palm Beach Post with a big problem in West Palm Beach (if only our little City of Lake Worth had these kind of problems):

Financial executive Euclid Walker would love to see more office space downtown. He moved his company, Parkway Investment Management, from Chicago to West Palm Beach’s Phillips Point complex. He’s seeking more space for his expanding firm, but he said the search for a bigger office has grown frustrating.

“We started looking for larger space just a few months ago,” Walker said this week during an event hosted by the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County. “The buildings we liked, where there was space available a year ago, there’s none available.”

An improving economy means West Palm Beach’s three trophy towers — CityPlace Tower, Esperante Corporate Center and Phillips Point have 990,000 square feet among them — are nearly full. Just how full is a matter for debate. Commercial real estate research firm CoStar counts more than 140,000 square feet available at those three addresses.

But Kelly Smallridge, head of the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County, said only small chunks of space are open.

“There’s not really a whole lot of any size,” Smallridge said. “You can find 2,000 square feet, but that’s not really what our end goal is.”