Making lemonade from a lemon

No landlord ever wants 176,089 square feet of specialized office and medical space to suddenly come to market, but in the case of Highwoods Properties Inc.’s Westshore property formerly occupied by Laser Spine Institute’s headquarters, the building owner may experience a happy ending.

That’s because the Class A vacancy rate in the Westshore office market in Tampa is among the lowest along the Gulf Coast. The single-digit Class A vacancy rate of 9.3% as of year-end 2018 ranks among the lowest in the entire Tampa/St. Petersburg submarket, according to figures from real estate researcher CoStar Group Inc. Large, contiguous blocks of space are even harder to come by.