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Dec 20, 2006 9:46 pm US/Pacific
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Businesses Moving Back To SF's South Of Market
by Simon Perez
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5) ―
Meetro is an internet company that helps people get together on line. It's is part of the next wave of Internet companies, a phenomenon called Web 2.0.
Many of these new web comapnies are typically unconventional, playing ball at the office with beer on hand.
And their employeees are attracted to San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood.
"We moved up to San Francisco about two months ago and we're just loving being in the city," says Meetro Vice President Vinnie Lauria. "It's a much more urban life, there's more to do."
Meetro CFO Dan Bragiel said: "You're paying a little bit more but you're getting value in different ways: getting to work faster and meeting more people in the city."
Soon after the dot-com bust, office vacancy rates ballooned to 42.3 percent in the South of Market neighborhood.
As more and more companies move back or expand, the the vacancy rate has dropped, down to just over 16 percent in the third quarter this year.
Steven Anderson works for the CAC Group tracking vacancy rates. He says it's not only internet companies fueling the resurgence.
"Everything from banks, lawyers, financial institutions, advertising, a lot of the people who had down drafts in their business after the crash so to speak have now picked back up," Anderson said.
In 2002, an office might be vacant because a company went bust; now it's vacant because the company outgrew the space.
"It seems like a much more sustainable real growth pattern than the crazy explosion of the past," according to Anderson.
Sustainable, but quirky nonethelss, which is why South of Market is hot again.
"The whole idea of nerds being fostered in an environment where they feel like they can be smart and do smart things and still have fun and not feel like people are pressuring them into doing something for just money, profit," said Meetro employee Matt Jones.
While the market is hot, it's no where near as high as it was in the late 1990s, when vacancy rates were as low as one percent.
(© MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)