Laxson says most of Everett's Class A office space is tied up in the buildings owned by Art Skotdahl—a local commercial real estate king pin. And, for the most part, Skotdahl is sitting on well-tenanted properties, leaving little available for tenants seeking quality Everett address.

At the end of the first quarter, a report out of the Seattle office of Grubb & Ellis counted 3,542,626 sf in the Northend market, of which 1,305,739 sf belong to Everett. While the report lists the city as having a 19.9% vacancy rate, Laxson notes that much of what is vacant falls short of class A ranking.

Laxson adds that most of the higher-quality office space that is available here is very small pieces. "We recently had a client looking for around 2,000 sf of office space in downtown, but it's been hard to find anything of good quality in that size range. There are a lot of 1,200-sf to 1,500-sf spaces available, but they're mostly in class B and C buildings."

Outside of the downtown core, Laxson says a tenant could find Class A space in the glass high-rises along Everett Mall Way. "There is some space available in that area," says Laxson, "and I believe the rents there are running somewhere in the range of $15/sf to $18/sf triple net."

"There are scatterings of smaller, decent properties in Everett proper that are running $10/sf to $22/sf," Laxson notes, but he says many landlords here are not in the position to make steep reductions in rents despite the lack of tenants. "Compared to Seattle and Bellevue, Everett rates have always been lower, so most owners here can't take big hits by reducing rents too steeply." In some instances, though, he says a few landlords have been offering concessions and a free month or two of rent, but not to the extent of those being offered in the larger sub-markets.