Scottsdale: Tech Magnet

Tech's an up-and-coming industry in Phoenix, and Old Town Scottsdale is on the leading edge of being a local tech mecca, JLL's Trevor Pratt tells us. He repped the latest tech company to come to Scottsdale, OutboundEngine, which has just moved in at 4110 N Scottsdale Rd in Old Town.

High-tech companies were one of the first industries to move out of cookie-cutter campuses for urban addresses to appease and retain Millennials, Trevor says, adding that Old Town Scottsdale is one of these places. "It blasts the idea of a stuffy office and replaces it with an environment where high-tech's creative class can work and play, and collaborate with other like-minded firms."

Based in Austin, OutboundEngine specializes in content, email and social media marketing. The company will use the new location as a regional sales and business development center, and plans to hire 60 employees over the next year. “Projects like the Galleria and Camelback Square are quickly filling with tech tenants looking for the same setting that attracted OutboundEngine,” says JLL's John Pierson, who repped OutboundEngine along with Trevor. Cushman & Wakefield's Greg Mayer repped the landlord.

Scottsdale's attracting tech companies, but that's not all: office space users of all varieties want to be there. 42Floors director of growth and commercial real estate research Patrick Leiser tells us that at the beginning of 2012, vacancy rates in the Phoenix metro area and in Scottsdale were nearly identical (about 22.5%). Today, thanks to the improving economy, vacancy rates in Phoenix have fallen to 18.8%—while in Scottsdale, these rates have fallen to 14.7%.