Tight commercial rental market gets tighter

Major segments in the Anchorage commercial real estate market show low vacancies, with industry officials expecting the trend to continue in 2001.

Office space vacancies continue to decline while some types of warehouse and industrial space is also growing scarce, real estate representatives

The Anchorage office vacancy rate hit 2.4 percent for February, down from 3.2 percent in February 2000, according to a survey by Anchorage real estate appraisers and consultants Kincaid & Riely LLC. The survey included 211 buildings representing more than 7 million square feet of office space.

Most of the change in Anchorage office vacancy rates came in the Midtown area, the survey said. One reason can be traced to vacancies created when state offices moved out of the Frontier Building then being filled between 2000 and 2001, said Kincaid & Riely managing member Heather Fair.

She also expects to see more construction in mid-Anchorage. For example, Arctic Slope Regional Corp. has proposed consolidating its office space into a new building in the area, she said. However, that project would not be completed for another two years, she said.