Crazy like a fox, Joe Simone blazes a trail for Bronx office development.

When Joe Simone, president of the Simone Development Company, first announced that he intended to develop 2 million square feet of class-A office space on the site of a former mental health facility in the Bronx, many wondered whether or not Mr. Simone should be committed to the institution rather than building on it.

However, the startling alacrity with which tenants have been leasing the space has proved all the doubters wrong. Strange as it is to contemplate, the Bronx is now a hot spot for commercial real estate.

"I've been developing in the area my whole career," said Simone, "and I know the area very well. It's been totally under-serviced and under-officed [sic]." That statement is not only true for the Westchester Square neighborhood where the development is located, but could also be applied to the Bronx as a whole.

The Hutchinson Metro Center is a 42-acre, multi-building office park that will provide approximately 2 million square feet of office space upon its completion, boosting the amount of existing office space in the Bronx by 25%. And that's just the beginning, according to Simone. "By the time we're done, we expect to double the existing space in the market place."

Despite the radical nature of building class-A office space in the Bronx, the first building was leased almost immediately. "Our first building, 460,000 square feet was a 105% subscribed. We've given them overflow space in the next building."

The first tower of the second building--which comprises 260,000 square feet of the total 520,000 square foot building--will be topped out this week.

A panoply of factors contribute to the interest in leasing space in the Hutchinson Metro Center, and considering the magnitude of those factors, it is amazing no one had conceived of the advantages of developing office space in the Bronx earlier. A combination of location, available acreage, and rent combined to make Hutchinson Metro Center attractive to a wide range of clients.

The first advantage the Bronx possesses as a location is just that, location. While not centrally located in the dated, Manhattan-centric paradigm, the Bronx is ideally situated to take advantage of a work force from the entire region, thanks to the site's proximity to both public transportation and numerous highways.

"We're more centrally located to all the major airports, a lot of the corporate users have management that are located personally farther north in Westchester and Long Island, and lastly, in our location there is a far greater availability of talent at all levels of salary," said Tara Stacom, executive vice president at Cushman and Wakefield, the exclusive leasing agents for the property.

Another upside of being in the Bronx is that Simone Development Company could build an actual office park, reminiscent more of the suburbs than the city.

JoAnn Stock, senior director at Cushman and Wakefield, sees the green space and campus atmosphere as a mechanism for turning dearth of culinary and cultural options associated with the Bronx into mechanism for occupational cohesiveness. "Creating the suburban environment served a purpose. In Manhattan, you can walk outside and go to a deli or a restaurant. In the Bronx, you really don't have that. So we took that and turned it around into a positive," said Stock.

"We have a wonderful cafeteria run by an Italian restaurant. We have grass, trees, and you can take your car and run errands on your lunch hour. Lack of density in the Bronx gave us more freedom that way".

The emphasis on commuter convenience and the access to a large swath of territory dovetails in the amenities at the Hutchinson Metro Center. The Center has a dry cleaner and a daycare center, both of which would be more difficult to take advantage of without a car. And, of course, there is a great deal of parking.

However, more than the amenities or the convenience, economic factors drove the tenants to consider leasing office space in a borough not known for office space, at a site that was not as of yet constructed.

The initial wave of tenants were companies which had offices around the Bronx, but due to the lack of available space, were unable to consolidate their operations at a single location.

Those customers were later joined by the Bronx headquarters of larger companies based primarily in Westchester or Manhattan. Finally, the last year has seen an influx of tenants driven to the Bronx by the rising rents both north and south of the Bronx.

"The first tenant in the site was the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, and it's their headquarters for the region. They were in about six different offices in the Bronx, and now they're together in one space. In the first phase, we saw that a lot of business couldn't centralize because of the lack of office space in the Bronx. So it's been a wonderful balance of tenants throughout the first phase," said Stacom.

"In the second phase, additionally, we are beginning to sense a far greater interest from companies in Manhattan who can't afford the rent. We've been having showings from 30130,000 s/f from tenants who are looking to move to the outer boroughs."

Even as the Hutchinson Metro Center continues to grow into its final two million square feet, the greatest impact might not be the immediate expansion of office space in the Bronx caused by the Center itself, but the later addition of office space from developers who now view the Bronx as a viable location for class-A office space. Simone and his team have succeeded in highlighting the myriad advantages of outer borough locations, and positioned the Bronx to take advantage of the insatiable demand for office space in New York City.

"There is such an imbalance in the supply and demand, that everyone is going to benefit from it. It's just going to be passed around to all of the boroughs," said Stock.

As Simone sees it, this is just the beginning of the Bronx turning into as natural a location for an office building as Manhattan. "Let's put it this way," he said, "when we started doing this, no one was doing speculative office construction anywhere, especially not in the Bronx. Now, you're starting to hear about people developing new office buildings."

Certainly, the Hutchinson Metro Center represents only the first drop in an impending deluge of office space development in outer borough locations.

As rents in Manhattan continue to rise with the demand for office space in New York City refusing to diminish, many may look back at their disregard for the Bronx as a viable site for development. Simone has proven that the Bronx is far more centrally located than conventionally perceived, and the Bronx is ready for commercial real estate.

And the developer is certainly excited for the future of this borough. "The Bronx can absorb every drop of demand for office space, and then some."