Maricopa County Signs 42 KSF Office Lease

Mesa Corporate Center. Image courtesy of CBRE

Maricopa County has signed a 41,917-square-foot lease at Mesa Corporate Center, a 106,209-square-foot office building in Mesa, Ariz.

According to CBRE research, the deal represents the submarket’s largest lease transaction in the last three years. A CBRE team assisted the landlord, Shadow Ridge Estates. CommercialEdge information shows Shadow Ridge had acquired the Class B property in 2018 from Buchanan Street Partners, in a $15.6 million deal.

Situated on an 8.5-acre site at 1001 W. Southern Ave. in the Superstition Corridor, Mesa Corporate Center came online in 2000. The two-story building features 52,500-square-foot floorplates and a parking ratio of 5 spaces per 1,000 square feet. Maricopa County will be joining Carrington College and Esurance on the roster, among other tenants.

The property is roughly 3 miles southwest of downtown Mesa and 16 miles east of downtown Phoenix, in the Fiesta District. The location is within walking distance of a 16-story office tower that traded for $39.5 million in April, also with the assistance of CBRE.

CBRE’s Jamie Swirtz and Bruce Suppes negotiated the lease on behalf of Shadow Ridge. Swirtz said, in a prepared statement, that the submarket is still in high demand due to its proximity to freeways and its educated workforce.

Improvement in office occupancy

Although the office market is still on the road to recovery, leasing activity has improved at a slow and steady pace across The Valley. A recent CommercialEdge report shows metro Phoenix had a 17.2 percent office vacancy rate as of August, marking a 50-basis-point decrease month-over-month and a 30-basis-point improvement year-over-year. However, the value was higher than the national average rate of 15.4 percent.

The same dataset pinpointed Mesa as The Valley’s second best-performing submarket for office occupancy with a 7.7 percent vacancy rate, showing an improvement of 50 basis points when compared to July. Tempe–Mill, the metro’s leading submarket for occupancy, reached a 4.6 percent vacancy rate in August.