Bethesda Place 1 and 2, at 7600 and 7700 Wisconsin Ave in Bethesda, were half-empty less than two years ago, despite being Class-A offices walking distance from Metro.

CBRE SVP Jim Cahill, working for property owners The Tower Cos and Polinger Co, has been on quite the hot streak since then, signing six leases, including a renewal of a 120k SF GSA lease, over that time, and bringing the 470k SF of offices from 54.5% occupied to 96.5%.

The new tenants brought in over that time frame:

• Lerch, Early & Brewer Attorneys at Law (41k SF)

• United Educators (28k SF)

• Berkley Point Financial Services (23k SF)

• Furey, Doolan & Abell (10k SF)

• Northmarq Capital (6,900 SF)

Those leases are just more examples of the encouraging start to 2016 for the suburban Maryland office market, which saw 216k SF of positive net absorption in Q1, according to CBRE. That's not even counting the recently signed 155k SF lease for Abt Associates in North Bethesda, the largest private sector lease in DC's northern suburbs in more than a decade, according to Cushman & Wakefield.