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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 15

Courtesy 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 market

INSIDE

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