Back in 2014, Etsy signed a 200,000-square-foot office lease at the Dumbo Heights complex, anchoring RFR Realty, LIVWRK and Kushner Companies’ 1.2 million-square-foot redevelopment project. This was seen as a good omen for the borough’s office market and developers scurried to get their own office projects off the ground in an as-yet-untapped market.
Three years later, however, that market has gone from being thin to over-saturated. According to CBRE, Office leasing activity in the borough stood at 430,000 square feet in the first quarter of 2017 (more than double the volume of a year earlier), but that was no match for the 900,000 square feet of new space delivered to the market over the same period.
There are currently 23 major office projects planned for Brooklyn, which will add roughly 6.9 million square feet to the market by 2020, according to Cushman & Wakefield. Now, developers are wondering if the demand can keep up with the supply.
