[JManc]

Originally Posted by Shawn

Just to get this out of the way, I’m neutral on the Phoenix skyline. I don’t have a height fetish, so the lack of tall towers doesn’t bother me, but I do love built form density, and it’s here I find Phoenix to be woefully lacking.

But I want to point this out: some economies don’t need towers. What types of companies rent large floor plates in 30+ floor office buildings? Finance, white collar head offices, service companies with the revenue to justify the overhead, etc. This isn’t Phoenix’s DNA.

Cambridge Mass as of Q2 2019 has over 27 million sq feet of class A office & lab space, with vacancy rates of 0.8%. Another 2 million sq feet will come online over the next six months. That’s more class A sq footage than many major cities’ downtowns have. Yet the Cambridge skyline, even in booming Kendall Square, has nothing over 350 feet tall; biotech labs need HVAC and other system support to such an extent that building over about 10 floors becomes prohibitively expensive.

You can't really compare Phoenix to Cambridge either, even though Phoenix is huge; Cambridge is a major hub for pharma, education, tech and the start-up industry. I can't think of one thing Phoenix is known for other than University of Phoenix and call centers.