It’s no exaggeration to say that office space, especially in the class A variety, is in high demand in certain portions of the Wilmington area.
 
Anyone can see that’s true in the Mayfaire-Landfall submarket, where little if any class A space was available as of press time.
 
“It’s just non-existent right now, to purchase or even to lease,” said Keith Austin, broker with Wilmington-based Maus, Warwick, Matthews & Co.
 
Austin recently helped close the nearly $12 million sale of 68,000 square feet of office space at 1001 Military Cutoff Road to some investors based in Greensboro.
 
In another example, an eight-year commercial real estate journey came to a close in February in nearby Mayfaire’s office park.
 
The Offices at Mayfaire VI sold to Raleigh investors, and the deed shows that the buyer, Ticon Properties, paid $11.7 million to previous owner The Offices at Mayfaire VI, an entity of Wilmington-based development firm SAMM Properties.
 
The 40,500-square-foot office building is leased in its entirety by banking software company nCino.
 
Offices at Mayfaire developer Steve Anderson of SAMM Properties led the creation of 222,500 square feet of office space within the Mayfaire office park from 2011 to 2019.
 
It will be strange to no longer see Anderson’s Offices at Mayfaire sign on Military Cutoff Road in front of Mayfaire Community Center after so much time. But Anderson and his office development team, including son Parker Anderson of SAMM Properties and listing agent Steve Hall, partner with Maus, Warwick, Matthews & Co., are working on an Oleander Drive office and retail project called Bradley Creek Station, expected to be complete by next year.
 
The 80,112-square-foot building will consist of class A retail space on the first floor and class A office space on the second and third floors with the option to lease or purchase, Hall said recently.
 
Another illustration of the demand for office space is another Hall listing, this one at Mayfaire Town Center, on a small patch of undeveloped land on Town Center Drive that was once planned to become more retail space.
 
Hall has been working with Mayfaire Town Center owner CBL Properties to market the spot as suitable for a 9,500-square-foot, single-story office building.
 
The change from retail to office plans resulted from the “lack of inventory for office space in the Mayfaire market,” Hall said.
 
Its location gives a business owner “the opportunity to offer his employees a live-work environment with the access of walking to restaurants, exercise facilities” and more, Hall said.
 
Perhaps farther out on the horizon is additional office space on Military Cutoff and Eastwood roads at planned developments CenterPoint and The Avenue and in the next phase of Autumn Hall.
 
As the boss Michael on the NBC hit TV show The Office once said, “An office is a place where dreams come true.” Or at the very least, it can be where jobs are created.