OC landlords don't all need to look quite as far as Middle America for opportunity, at least in the office market. Irvine-based CIP Real Estate SVP Scott Flemer tells us that the office market in Ontario, and for that matter the Inland Empire as a whole, is currently benefiting from a growing workforce and extremely competitive lease rates for Class-A office space, especially when compared to coastal Class-A markets. (It's good news because those Midwestern states are getting pretty cold these days.) “These factors make the Inland Empire area attractive to insurance companies, engineering companies, real estate and finance companies,” he says.

During Q4, leasing was brisk at CIP’s Empire Towers on Inland Empire Blvd in Ontario, a 400k SF four-tower property, Scott says. Among others, CBRE, Wells Fargo, LibertyMutual, Sedgwick Claims Management, Windsor Quality Foods Co, and National General Insurance renewed, expanded, or inked new leases at the property during the quarter, for a total of 160k SF. Besides the attractiveness of the market, he says, “our strategy to create multi-tenant floors at Empire Towers resulted in a surge of leasing.” (Number one rule of office buildings and singles mixers: people like to mingle.)