Outer boroughs see increased industrial activity.

Greiner-Maltz Company, Inc., of Long Island City and Woodbury, Long Island has issued its Brooklyn, Queens, Nassau and Suffolk Industrial Real Estate Report for the first quarter of 1995. In addition to the figures for Brooklyn and Queens that have been issued for many years, this new format provides detailed data about industrial space in Nassau and Suffolk, as well as a perspective on office space in Long Island.

While availability rates have actually gone up somewhat in Brooklyn (to 14.02 percent) and were down slightly in Queens (to 12.87 percent), Richard Maltz, SIOR, Greiner-Maltz chairman and head of the Long Island City office, explains that, "The overall availability rates do not truly reflect the generally healthy turn the market has taken. In both Brooklyn and Queens, absorption levels are positive for at least the second consecutive quarter - a condition that has been quite rare in the nineties. The small space market is showing improvement and most activity continues to be in smaller units, reflecting the fact that at this time small businesses predominate in Queens and Brooklyn. This is a practical market. We have learned to live with the changes in the economy, and see that new users are adapting old spaces for current needs."

Activity levels in the first quarter of 1995 are up very sharply in the "outer boroughs" of New York City. In Brooklyn, more deals were closed than in any quarter in the past five years. There was a great deal of sales and leasing activity among spaces under 20,000 square feet (73 deals closed), and only 45 were added. Three very large deals involving spaces over 100,000 square feet and totaling 455,000 square feet closed; yet they were offset by the addition of four new units with a total of 982,200 square feet.

William E. Greiner, SIOR, head of the Woodbury branch of the company, notes that "Overall, it seems that choices are narrowing for tenants and buyers. For the first quarter of 1995. Suffolk County has an overall availability rate of 8.14 percent, with most of the available space and the highest percentage of vacancy among small units (under 30,000 square feet.) Suffolk is home to many newer companies, often high-tech start-ups, including software manufacturers. Many of them start in one-story buildings that were manufacturing plants or distribution centers. We have seen that as the businesses progress, the buildings may be converted to research-and-development or to office usage."

Nassau has 8.49 percent of its industrial space available. Here too, it is the smaller units in which tenants have the most choice and there are comparatively few very large units available.

The Greiner-Maltz survey of office space in Nassau and Suffolk shows that more than half the space in Nassau County was built before 1985; and approximately half of that in Suffolk. There was a very high rate of new construction in the '80s, which has slowed considerably - only one 60,000 square-foot building is now under construction.

Vice President Jerome Norton, Sales Manager of the Office Division, says "Our figures for corporate office buildings over 15,000 square feet show that in Nassau, 15.5 percent of office space is available; and 16.16 percent is available in Suffolk. Rentals have remained stable, encouraging companies to expand their usage or to relocate to better space. There are few office space availabilities in units over 50,000 square feet. As the market tightens, landlords are reducing concessions such as rent abatement or expansive work letters."

The four counties serviced by Greiner-Maltz Company Inc. are among the busiest and most productive in the country. Collectively, they contain over 396,377,000 square feet of industrial real estate space, an inventory exceeded by only three metropolitan areas in the United States. Nassau and Suffolk combined have over 198,445,000 square feet and Brooklyn and Queens together have almost 198,000,000 square feet of warehouse and factory space.