November 1, 2016: Our speaker was Lee Allen, Executive Vice President of JLL, a corporate real estate firm that specializes in broker management services. Lee is a graduate of the University of the South. He began his career by serving in the Peace Corp for two years in Africa.
JLL in Charleston area is an off sheet of a nationwide organization that established a presence in Charleston in 2014. While Charleston has always been a wonderful place to live, in the past few years it has become a much sought after region for the location of commercial services. Is has a very strong presence in the automotive and aviation fields.
At the present time there are 13 different projects in the development stage with office space ranging from 80,000 sf for Comcast and 175,000 sf for Blackbaud for a total square footage of 1,594,000. The total value of these properties is $408,375,000.
The most sought after locations have been downtown Charleston, Daniel Island and Mount Pleasant. With those areas reaching capacity the next area likely to be developed is North Charleston and beyond.
At the industrial level there are 12 projects currently in the development stage with a total square footage of 3,530,000 and a value of $214,745,000.
— Fred Sales, Keyway Committee