Point of view office property performance in live-work-play places

Abstract

This analysis of central business districts (CBDs) and their suburban areas was inspired by the analysis of 24-hour cities by Kelly, Adair, McGreal, and Roulac (2013). The 44 cities are drawn from the 50 largest U.S. metro areas and include 24 of the 26 markets in the Kelly, Adair, McGreal, and Roulac article. Downtowns like the seven 24-hour cities offer live-workplay (LWP) environments that appear to be attracting young talent and tech-oriented companies. LWP places are compact, dense, connected, mixed use, diverse, and walkable with destinations, public spaces, and critical mass. Research conducted for NAIOP defined places with these features as ‘‘vibrant centers.’’ Subsequent work produced an index with nine face-valid measures of vibrancy for 65 cities. This analysis determines the extent to which the vibrancy index values are associated with the area-specific performance of office properties in these 44 large markets. The results indicate that strong associations do exist between downtown vibrancy a...