A quick look at Baltimore’s skyline tells the story. No matter which direction you look, cranes and the skeletal framework of buildings under construction dot the landscape.
The view in the surrounding jurisdictions is much the same, with new office construction in Howard and Anne Arundel counties and industrial developments along the I-95 corridor stretching into Harford and Cecil counties.
According to recent development reports, we are seeing growth across a number of strategic industries in Greater Baltimore.
The burgeoning life sciences market is having a significant impact on the construction and leasing activity in Baltimore City. With the first building at the University of Maryland BioPark an overwhelming success, a second building encompassing 220,000 square feet is under construction and due to come online this summer. When completed, the entire UMB BioPark will comprise 10 acres and up to 10 lab and office buildings, as well as garages and retail space.
The health care sector is also driving office absorption throughout Greater Baltimore. In recent months, Maxim Healthcare Services (170,000 square feet), CareFirst of Maryland (87,000 square feet), Thomson Prometric (85,000 square feet), LifeBridge Health (60,000 square feet) and Columbia Medical (30,000 square feet) have all executed sizeable leases.
Health care, however, is hardly alone. The financial services sector is also making a huge impact here. The largest new building in the metropolitan area, the 510,000-square-foot 1st Mariner Bank building, was completed last year and came onto the market 67 percent pre-leased. And just last month, Legg Mason agreed to lease up to 400,000 square feet in the soon-to-be-built, mixed-use complex in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor East.
Other financial services firms relocating to larger quarters in the region included Castle Point Mortgage (60,000 square feet), Wells Fargo (60,000 square feet), Susquehanna Bank (34,000 square feet) and SunTrust Leasing (28,000 square feet).
And of course, you can’t talk about development in Greater Baltimore without talking about BRAC, the Base Realignment and Closure program. At Aberdeen Proving Ground, the Government and Technology Enterprise — a state-of-the-art R&D and technology business park for government and nongovernment users— is being developed by Opus East. While BRAC’s full impact has yet to be felt, the region has already seen major expansions from Booz Allen Hamilton (126,000 square feet), Sparta (66,000 square feet) and Raytheon Solipsys (60,000 square feet).
In all, more than 2 million square feet of new office space is currently under construction in Greater Baltimore. And while less than a third of that space is pre-leased, more than two-thirds is in the very active Baltimore-Washington Corridor, including the largest single new product, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory’s 243,000-square-foot build-to-suit.
On the industrial side, condominium development, which has prospered elsewhere in the U.S., is now making its way into Greater Baltimore. Projects like the ones being developed on Days Cove Road in the White Marsh Business Park are becoming more widespread.
So, too, is industrial development in Harford and Cecil counties. Both General Electric and Ikea have opened million-square-foot distribution centers in Cecil County. Champion Partners, meanwhile, is developing a 600,000-square-foot distribution center at TradeCenter@95 to serve the regional operations of firms such as Home Depot and Wal-Mart.
Last year, the Harford County market had positive absorption, buoyed by leases of more than 100,000 square feet to such companies as Lifelike Products and Archway Marketing.
Farther south, First Industrial is beginning site work on a 300,000-square-foot building at St. John Properties’ Crossroads@95. Distribution buildings are also under construction near BWI Airport at Lincoln Crossroads and in Preston Gateway.
Bulk distribution has had a tremendous impact on absorption as well, with large blocks of space being leased by Weyerhaeuser, U.S. Can, Goetz Candy, GAF, Under Armour and Metro Logics, among others.
Finally, Duke Realty’s demolition of the former General Motors plant in Southeast Baltimore near Dundalk is almost complete. Duke plans to break ground later this year on a 16-building industrial park that will focus primarily on port-related operations.
Development experts expect demand to level off somewhat in 2007, but with the life sciences continuing to flourish and BRAC kicking into gear, the market should remain vibrant. One thing’s for sure: Greater Baltimore’s office and industrial markets won’t be boring.