While that might give it the dubious distinction of one of the highest office vacancy rates in the nation - if not the highest - for a submarket, brokers Chris Phenicie and David Hart are optimistic.

The two veteran brokers along the corridor recently joined Insignia/ESG and completed an exhaustive analysis of the market.

Although no one is happy with more than half of the space - including flex space - sitting empty, a year earlier the vacancy rate was a whopping 62% Phenicie says.

But the market almost certainly has hit the bottom, where it has been for the past four or five months, he says. And because the market has a total of only 6.8 million sf, it should improve faster than many think, he tells GlobeSt.com.

"The basic fundamentals in the Denver/Boulder corridor are solid and continue to improve," according to the report. "The Northwest Parkway (the beltway extension to the Denver International Airport) should be completed in late 2003. It has attracted attention from tenants who are aware that it will make Interlocken (a major business park) only 19 miles from the airport and provide excellent access to a sizeable base of new housing. A newly completed portion of the road recently opened between I-25 and Colorado Boulevard."

In addition, Hart notes that they expect little new space to come to the market through bankruptcy, buyouts or expiration. And despite the high vacancy rate, a total of 719,932-sf of office space was leased last year, Hart notes. In the best years, it leased from 800,000 to 1.2 million sf, so it is not that far off, he says.

Indeed, the market, where 3.5 million sf is currently available, showed positive net absorption of about 420,000-sf last year, the only major submarket in the Denver area to show positive absorption.

"We expect less new space to come on the market in 2003 and less sublease activity to take place, mostly due to fewer sublease availabilities, so positive absorption should increase dramatically this year," according to the report.