QCS II will pour 825,000 square-feet of new Class A office space into the Downtown office market. That’s great only if the market can handle it, and some think that the relocation of one company Downtown (AFG) into it isn’t necessarily the best scenario. Well to some extent they’re right, but the whole issue isn’t a negative thing either.
AFG currently occupies office space in a variety of older office buildings Downtown (580 Building, 525 Vine), and will be occupying 22 floors of QCS II for a total of 530,000 square-feet. By leaving these spaces and consolidating into one newer space it allows for those older and thus more affordable spaces to be freed up for smaller companies that can not afford the leases at a building like QCS II.
It is essentially all part of a larger office market cycle that occurs. Older spaces become less desirable and are either replaced by newer spaces and taken off the market (via apartment conversions and what not) or are then filled by smaller companies that can not afford the Class A office space.
So while it isn’t great news to hear that QCS II won’t be filled by a new company to the region…it certainly isn’t bad news that the Downtown market is able to fill another 800,000+ square-feet of office space. On a side note, the most recent State of Downtown quarterly report says that Downtown Cincinnati actually lowered its vacancy rate by nearly 3% in the 3Q.
