A pattern repeats itself along Bakersfield\u2019s California Avenue professional services corridor west of downtown: Building after building has signs out front advertising space for lease.<\/p>\n
The scene would appear to confirm predictions the office market would experience a lasting, post-pandemic downturn as pajama-clad employees put in most if not all their workdays from home, showing up only on Zoom.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s far from the case, according to local commercial real estate brokers. They say a closer look indicates office vacancies around Bakersfield are limited and that, with no new construction in sight, the market is quickly shifting in favor of landlords.<\/p>\n
As demonstrated by Clinica Sierra Vista\u2019s recent purchase of a 100,000-square-foot building from Chevron, even the downsizing of one of the local economy\u2019s biggest historical drivers of the office market \u2014 the oil and gas industry \u2014 hasn\u2019t left gaping vacancies around town.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe office market has really firmed up,\u201d said office broker Jeff Andrew, executive vice president and principal at Cushman & Wakefield in Bakersfield.<\/p>\n
In his experience, offices of the size most companies need are in limited supply lately. Those perennial for-rent signs along California Avenue \u201ccan mean one little space is available in a large, 50,000-square-foot building,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Local office broker Martin J. \u201cMarty\u201d Starr shared Andrew\u2019s assessment. The partner and principal at ASU Commercial said conditions have turned in favor of property owners as large spaces that might have sat empty in years past are being spoken for by all kinds of tenants.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had a backfill,\u201d he said before extending his observations to what amounted to a positive assessment of the regional economy. \u201cMaybe we\u2019ve diversified a little bit better.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bakersfield\u2019s relatively traditional workforce may make it something of an exception nationally, as data suggests not everyone has returned to the office.<\/p>\n
Canadian-based employee-monitoring software company WorkTime points to federal statistics showing nearly a quarter of U.S. employees worked remotely as least part of the time in March 2025.<\/p>\n
The company highlighted a Stanford study concluding hybrid office-and-remote work schedules don\u2019t hurt productivity and that they actually cut employee turnover rates as much as a third.<\/p>\n
Bakersfield\u2019s overall office market is estimated to have dropped to about 8%, which according to Andrew qualifies as a landlord\u2019s market.<\/p>\n
What that optimism doesn\u2019t fully reflect, however, is the utter lack of activity at the former State Farm office complex, one of the city\u2019s largest, at 900 Old River Road.<\/p>\n
After the insurer pulled out around 2013, the 575,291-square-foot property was purchased by local oil producer California Resources Corp., which itself sold the property to local investors in 2022.<\/p>\n
The reason that space still sits empty, Andrew and Starr said, is its layout. The property isn\u2019t just large \u2014 it\u2019s also awkward: A single tenant would have to occupy 100,000 square feet to justify heating and cooling such an expansive building.<\/p>\n
Andrew said office tenants like that are hard to come by.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s just not those types of users in the market anymore in California,\u201d he said. \u201cLarge users are moving out of California. They\u2019re not moving into California.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the property is being marketed for lease, expectations are that it\u2019ll eventually be demolished, at a cost of several million dollars, for redevelopment into what could be a multi-use project.<\/p>\n
Starr said there remain plenty of options for office users, but only if they\u2019re looking for spaces measuring between about 1,000 and 3,500 square feet.<\/p>\n
That situation probably won\u2019t change anytime soon, if only because new construction has become prohibitively expensive. Until costs building come down, or rents come up, he said the market will probably remain tight for a while.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, office rents are rising, if only gradually, and it\u2019s not happening everywhere, Starr said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say the farther west of town you go the larger increases we\u2019re seeing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A pattern repeats itself along Bakersfield\u2019s California Avenue professional services corridor west of downtown: Building after building has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[151,153,152,4188,7,56532,111796,111794,21414,111795,80549],"class_list":{"0":"post-251526","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bakersfield","8":"tag-bakersfield","9":"tag-bakersfield-headlines","10":"tag-bakersfield-news","11":"tag-building","12":"tag-california","13":"tag-california-avenue","14":"tag-jeff-andrew","15":"tag-office-broker","16":"tag-office-market","17":"tag-office-tenants","18":"tag-office-vacancies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}