The Maryland Insurance Administration is committed to downtown Baltimore.
The MIA recently signed a 10-year lease for 69,151 square feet at St. Paul Plaza, at 200 St. Paul Place, and will relocate from its current Mount Vernon location at 525 St. Paul Place by the middle of 2009.
The move brings about 300 MIA employees downtown and lifts St. Paul Plaza to 99 percent occupancy.
“They had probably five good candidates for their relocation,” said T. Courtenay Jenkins III, senior director in charge of office leasing and sales for Cushman & Wakefield in Baltimore, who represented the landlord, The Kornblatt Co., in the transaction. “They could have gone to Canton or anywhere in between, but they elected to stay in the City Center.”
The new space at St. Paul Plaza will be more accommodating to the MIA?s dependence on information technology, said Ralph Tyler, commissioner of the MIA. The old space wasn?t well-designed, and the MIA will make use of a more efficient floor plan at St. Paul Plaza, Tyler said.
Vacancy rates in the downtown area held at about 11 percent at the end of 2007, with average Class A office space rates between $26 and $33 per square foot, according to the Downtown Partnership?s State of Downtown Report.
The MIA has leased the top three floors of St. Paul Plaza ? floors 26, 27 and 28 ? and a portion of the 23rd floor. The space was previously occupied by T. Rowe Price and Chubb Insurance, but both companies have consolidated operations. T. Rowe Price moved to 100 Light St., while Chubb Insurance vacated half of its full floor and consolidated to Montgomery Park in West Baltimore.
The MIA joins a mix of tenants at St. Paul Plaza, including The NFL Player Benefits Office and the Maryland Attorney General?s Office.
“MIA?s move confirms the viability and economic health of the office market in City Center,” said J. Kirby Fowler, president of the Downtown Partnership.
