Crown Center lands two small leases, has plenty of room to offer

BOK Financial and Spring Venture Group signed small leases at Crown Center, but the office complex is still after more tenants to fill ample available space.

Crown Center announced this week that BOK Financial, a bank holding company that owns Bank of Kansas City and purchased Bank of Missouri last year, signed a lease that covers 5,445 square feet at 2405 Grand Blvd.

Spring Venture Group, an advertising and marketing company, took an additional 4,225 square feet on top of the current 60,000 it leases at 2301 McGee St. The Spring Venture lease brings that building up to 100 percent occupancy.

Crown Center, meanwhile, is actively marketing 250,000 square feet of vacant space at its Pershing office buildings, which run up the eastern edge of the office and retail complex. Colliers International has the leasing assignment for that space.

The space became available last year after Hallmark consolidated the employees it had working at the Pershing office buildings into Hallmark’s main headquarters.

“In order for Crown Center to take advantage of the interest in downtown office space, Hallmark began proactively moving employees out of the Pershing buildings and back into the main headquarters space,” said Anne Deuschle, integrated marketing manager for Crown Center. “This was completed last year, making the nearly 270,000 square feet of space available.”

That figure dropped to 250,000 when architecture firm BNIM announced that it would lease 20,000 square feet at Crown Center, a move that came after plans for a new Crossroads Arts District headquarters collapsed amid a political dispute over development tax breaks.

Research by real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield listed the office vacancy rate for Crown Center and the Crossroads at 20.7 percent, the third highest for the metro-area markets behind downtown Kansas City (25.2 percent) and the Northland (31.5 percent).

This story was originally published February 7, 2017 at 2:49 PM with the headline "Crown Center lands two small leases, has plenty of room to offer."