The 14-story Two Snowhill, overlooking Central Boulevard, willbe completed in 2011. Wragge is moving from its existing offices at55 Colmore Row. "This is a real coup, we've snared the bestprofessional services firm in the local market," says RichardProbert, with the project's development company Ballymore.

Consultant firm KPMG has already pre-leased 120,000 sf of OneSnowhill, which should be completed in about eight months. "We'reactively talking to other companies for the remaining floors of Oneand Two," Probert tells GlobeSt.com. He says he can't reveal theagreed-to lease rates, but says the asking rate for the remainingspace is UK$30 (US$59.4) per sf.

Probert says the market, the second largest in the country afterLondon, has about 15 million sf of total office stock, with anaverage absorption rate of about 500,000 sf of class A space peryear. "We've taken half of that in one fell swoop," he says. Therest of national market is slow, he says. "We're off the boil,everyone is very cautious reacting to the global doom and gloom.There's been oversupply rumors," Probert says. "But in Birmingham,investment values are better positioned, and the recent leases seemto be indicative of confidence."