View Full Version : List of Largest Business Districts in the US?



KayneMo
02-18-2012, 08:56 PM
Is there a list of the largest business districts that I'm missing on Google? Lol.

How many square feet of office space do the business districts of OKC have? Tulsa?

How do they rank in the US?

ljbab728
02-18-2012, 09:28 PM
I've never seen a comparative list of office space in US cities but one might exist somewhere. Here is a little info about OKC though.

http://www.priceedwards.com/?task=Office%20Market&id=3

http://www.priceedwards.com/sections/market/SurveyViewer/images/office/OKC-Total-Office-Market-Vacancy.jpg

http://www.priceedwards.com/sections/market/SurveyViewer/images/office/OKC-Total-Office-Market-Inventory.jpg

Oil Capital
02-19-2012, 12:22 PM
Is there a list of the largest business districts that I'm missing on Google? Lol.

How many square feet of office space do the business districts of OKC have? Tulsa?

How do they rank in the US?

Here is a list, but it is based on employment rather than square footage of office space (and it's 2000 numbers). http://www.demographia.com/db-cbd2000.pdf

lasomeday
02-19-2012, 04:37 PM
Here is a list, but it is based on employment rather than square footage of office space (and it's 2000 numbers). http://www.demographia.com/db-cbd2000.pdf

Sweet report!

Does OKC have a goal and a business plan to grow our employment? I am sure we have at least double the 16,400 in that report.

It would be nice if we had goals. 50,000 in 2015, 75,000 in 2025 100,000 in 2030. Maybe look at cities of similar size of population with drastically more people working in the CBD like Portland, OR. They have one of the largest with one of the smallest populations. I know the growth boundaries help with that, but also the infrastucture/bike friendly downtown that helps the growth of the CBD.

KayneMo
02-19-2012, 10:32 PM
I found this on Downtown OKC's website, it says there are 52,400 downtown employees (no year listed) and 6,000,000 square feet of office space (2008 source).
http://www.downtownokc.com/DowntownInDetail/QuickFacts.aspx

And in this report, there were 51,960 downtown employees in 2004.
http://www.downtownokc.com/Portals/0/docs/Downtown%20OKC%20Workforce%20_2_.pdf

Oil Capital
02-21-2012, 11:30 AM
I found this on Downtown OKC's website, it says there are 52,400 downtown employees (no year listed) and 6,000,000 square feet of office space (2008 source).
http://www.downtownokc.com/DowntownInDetail/QuickFacts.aspx

And in this report, there were 51,960 downtown employees in 2004.
http://www.downtownokc.com/Portals/0/docs/Downtown%20OKC%20Workforce%20_2_.pdf

I think they must define downtown differently. I wonder if downtownokc includes at least the med center, if not also the capital complex in their calculation. In any case. Demographia defines it pretty narrowly -- only the contiguous area (census tracts) where the big buildings are. In OKC's case, that is only an area of 1/3 of a square mile.

metro
02-22-2012, 07:18 AM
I'm willing to bet the business district in DFW suburb Las Colinas has more than Downtown OKC.

Oil Capital
02-22-2012, 11:25 AM
I'm willing to bet the business district in DFW suburb Las Colinas has more than Downtown OKC.

It appears you are correct. It looks like OKC should be up to, what, about 7.5-8 Million square feet with the addition of Devon? Transwestern says Las Colinas has 9.3 Million square feet of office space.

KayneMo
02-22-2012, 09:50 PM
Reports that I'm finding must all use different boundaries to define districts. Grubb and Ellis says the OKC CBD has 5.5 million square feet of office space, while NAI Sullivan Group says the CBD has 9.7 million square feet.

What would you all define as downtown? Maybe we could figure out the total square footage ourselves? Lol.

Oil Capital
02-23-2012, 09:50 AM
Reports that I'm finding must all use different boundaries to define districts. Grubb and Ellis says the OKC CBD has 5.5 million square feet of office space, while NAI Sullivan Group says the CBD has 9.7 million square feet.

What would you all define as downtown? Maybe we could figure out the total square footage ourselves? Lol.

The commercial real estate reports also report on different sets of buildings. Some report all buildings. Others report only on multi-tenant buildings. They also have different cut-offs for minimum size of building reported.

For example, Grubb & Ellis includes "all multitenant and single tenant buildings at least 20,000 square feet. Owner-occupied, government and medical buildings are not included."

KayneMo
02-24-2012, 10:29 PM
Oh yes I see. I wish I could find something that has the total floor space of all downtown buildings, and then categorized into office, government, hotel, residential, medical, etc.

OneOK
08-24-2013, 12:43 PM
I've concluded we have to (we get to) build that sort of list ourselves. Would you like to help, KayneMo - or others? Someone's going to have to spring for GIS tools --
The floor area data is there in local appraisal district databases, in many cases, but has to be georeferenced if it's to be kept up to date.

Or if you just want an educated estimate, you can have my guess:

With freemaptools' online map area calculator, I stretched out topographic shapes covering the densest two or 2.5 square miles of cities' built-up space. The highest in the Southwest is the Vegas Strip, somewhere over 100 million square feet together; followed by downtown-Uptown-Market Center-Design District Dallas, less than two thirds that. I think Dallas might pull in at no. 20 on the following list of nineteen.

Midtown Manhattan
Chicago Loop from Central Station all the way through River North
Midtown South
Lower Manhattan w/ train-connected Jersey City, downtown Brooklyn
Manhattan (Canal to 14th St.)
San Francisco east of Powell from Broadway all the way to 16th St.
Upper East Side
okay, okay, the Vegas Strip
everything in Boston between Mass Pike and the river
Harlem, East Harlem, and Morningside Heights
Seattle all the way from Smith Tower to South Lake Union
Center City and University City (Philly)
all of downtown Washington, D.C.
central Pittsburgh south on out to Oakland
Chicago Near North, Gold Coast, etc. etc.
Atlanta Midtown-Downtown/Marts
Upper West Side
a zillion buildings lining Brickell in Miami



These can be figured out accurately; it just takes an uncommon combination of imagination and lack of imagination to do it.