BALTIMORE, MD-St. John Properties delivered nearly 300,000 square feet of speculative space into the market in 2013 and leased some 1.2 million square feet of new space. The latter has much to do with the former, says Larry Maykrantz, president of the company. "We remain one of the few local commercial real estate companies that consistently construct speculative product on an annual basis," he says in a prepared statement.

With new leases and renewals, St. John's total last year came to more than 2.6 million square feet of space, representing 465 separate transactions. It initiated construction on more than 350,000 square feet of commercial office space.

Among the deals signed included the sale of 34 acres of land in Loudoun County to Corporate Office Properties Trust for $14 million, a 45,000 square foot lease signed by R/C Theatres at Lexington Exchange in St. Mary's County and the launch of construction on first building in the company's new Route 100 Tech Park near BWI Airport in Anne Arundel County.

Also last spring, St. John Properties and its joint venture partner Somerset Construction, revealed design plans for the next phase of Baltimore Crossroads: Greenleigh, which calls for 2,000 single-family, townhome and multifamily buildings.