by Michelle Z. Askeland
The Colorado technology sector
is experiencing record-breaking
growth, which greatly affects the
office properties landscape. Tech-
nology is the second-most active
industry within the Denver market,
according to a report by CBRE.
Today’s technology community
is vibrant, said Erik Mitisek, CEO of
Colorado Technology Association.
The largest tech sector is business-
to-business companies, which are
companies that produce software
and products to help run busi-
nesses.
Many national companies locate
regional offices in Colorado – such
as Google, which is growing to over
1,500 employees, Oracle, which has
over 4,500 employees in the state,
and IBM, with over 6,000 – and there
is also a vibrant startup community,
said Mitisek.
“I would say our secret sauce is
the breadth of our middle market;
the majority of our tech economy
that’s really successful is between
10 and 50 employees,” he said. “And
we’ve got a really great service
economy, great software service
businesses and a lot of middle-mar-
ket technology companies.”
In addition to mature companies,
Colorado is home to a strong mix of
entrepreneurial startup businesses.
This active group of startup office
users has different requirements
than the legacy office users, said
Jessica Ostermick, CBRE’s research
and analysis director.
“There are really two parallel
tracks when I look at the tech sec-
tor from a research standpoint –
there’s the startup community that
can quickly grow and change into
heavier office users,” she said. “And
then there’s the more traditional,
larger firms like HP that occupy
larger footprints and campuses.”
In the early 2000s, the tech
industry saw rapid growth due to
the Internet boom, but when that
bubble burst, Colorado was hit fairly
severely, said Mitisek. After that,
the market experienced four or five
years of quiet. Software developers
were the first to come back, and
from 2007 to 2009, the industry saw
movement upward.
“I would say, in the last three
years, you’ve seen explosive growth
– and you’ve seen it from a real
estate perspective and from a fund-
ing and venture capital perspective.”
Please see Page 15Courtesy Tryba Architects
The new Google campus in Boulder is designed to be a creative space that improves connectivity with employees and nature.
July 2015
Colorado’s tech industry strengthens office marketINSIDE
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