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During a recent visit to the Lehigh Valley, a national economist shared why some office markets are performing better than others \u2013 because they have life around them.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
During a recent visit to the Lehigh Valley, a national economist shared why some office markets are performing better than others \u2013 because they have life around them.<\/p>\n
While traditional nine-to-five business districts are struggling, some communities have been able to fill office space by intentionally planning them alongside housing and entertainment venues, often through private-public partnerships, said Thomas LaSalvia, Head of Commercial Real Estate Economics at Moody\u2019s Analytics.<\/p>\n
The \u201clive-work-play\u201d model is working, he told about 250 commercial real estate professionals on Sept. 30 at the Office and Industrial Property Summit of the Philadelphia chapter of the Society of Industrial and Office Realtors\u00ae<\/a>\u00a0(SIOR). The event was held at ArtsQuest at SteelStacks in Bethlehem.<\/p>\n \u201cThose mixed urban live-work-play types of communities are seeing the greatest success from a leasing perspective within office, and that’s again something else showing up across all of the metros within the United States,\u201d LaSalvia said.<\/p>\n A prime example is located just a few miles from where he spoke \u2013 Center City Allentown. And while LaSalvia did not cite Allentown as an example, the city\u2019s renaissance has been held as a model by others, most recently by Site Selection magazine.<\/p>\n An article<\/a> in September shared how Allentown city leaders worked with private developers, including City Center Group<\/a>, to create a district that includes 1.2 million square feet of Class A office space and about 1,800 apartments mingled with the 10,000-seat PPL Center arena, hotels, Archer Music Hall, restaurants, retail, and public spaces.<\/p>\n \u201cOur strategy was to build complementary uses around PPL Center that would create a vibrant live-work-play environment,\u201d Maggie Reilly, Director of Asset Management for City Center Group, told Site Selection. \u201cAfter decades when relatively few people lived downtown, we knew that creating a true neighborhood meant giving people compelling reasons to call downtown Allentown home.\u201d<\/p>\n The urban renaissance was driven by the creation of a unique taxing mechanism by the state Legislature, the Neighborhood Improvement Zone. It applies state and local taxes paid by businesses in the district toward debt service and bonds that funded the development. LaSalvia\u2019s remarks about the success of such communities were part of a presentation about data trends in office and industrial development and the factors influencing them.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Allentown_Center_City_med.jpg\")
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