Shifting market

The recession may have ended in 2009, but the office-space market in some hard-hit areas is just now starting to recover from the bust.

Consider Lee County, where car-rental giant Hertz is building a corporate campus to house its newly relocated global corporate headquarters. According to market tracker CoStar Group's mid-year report, 20% of the top-quality “class A” office space remains vacant in Lee.

Based on that vacancy rate, the area that includes Fort Myers is the least-recovered major office market on the Gulf Coast from Tampa to Naples. Most areas show class-A vacancy percentages in the mid- to low-teens and some with single digits, such as Pinellas County's Gateway area with 4.6%.