Charm offensive: Seeking success closer to the ground

George E. Marks seems entirely too cheerful for an owner of office developments.

He has seven of them, all in Philadelphia's northern suburbs, where office vacancies range from 20.8 percent to 22.8 percent, the region's highest.

Marks isn't in denial. But compared with the world around him, where entire multistory office buildings are empty or largely so, he is enduring this recessionary pounding on the office sector rather comfortably.

Of the 92,000 square feet of office space Marks has to offer from Plymouth Meeting to Chalfont, just 8,800 square feet, or 9.5 percent, is tenantless.

"The point is, we're doing fine," Marks said.

And he thinks he is well-positioned to benefit when the demand for office space - which has been steadily declining since the fourth quarter of 2007 - picks up.

His specialty is the smaller professional-office market, where users' needs are typically accommodated in less than 10,000 square feet.

Marks, who also is an architect, has been developing professional-office complexes from historic properties for 14 years. The way he sees the postrecession landscape, lawyers, accountants, and other professionals who were cut loose as part of downsizing will look to set up their own practices in much smaller settings than the largely indistinctive, impersonal mid- or high-rise structures where they used to work.

Marks boasts that instead of a communal lobby manned by security guards, he offers his tenants their "own front door" and control over their own space, typically about 3,000 square feet.

"If they decide they want to save a lot of money, they can turn the heat down," he said.

Now available to buy or lease is space at one of his newest projects, Steever Manor Professional Center, tucked along the Little Neshaminy Creek on Montgomery Township's border with Horsham. But so far, all seven occupants of the $3.7 million complex's six buildings are renting for roughly $18 a square foot, plus utilities and common-area maintenance charges.

The centerpiece is a restored stone manor house circa 1752, when a gristmill operated on the site. Adjacent buildings, built in 2007, are designed to resemble the historic house, where Steven Fairlie now operates his law practice.

"I was looking for something with character and charm, something you don't find in your typical Montgomery County office space," said Fairlie, who left a larger suburban law practice because he was "outgrowing the firm."

He, too, thinks the smaller, unique office spaces will have a following as the region's economy rebounds.

"I have been approached by several 'downsized' attorneys looking for homes," Fairlie said. "That trend is certainly out there."

So are partially built projects - and Steever Manor is one of them.

Jutting up from the four-acre site are the footings for two buildings, totaling nearly 10,000 square feet, that were supposed to be home to an insurance business that went out of business.

Fairlie seems unrattled by the turn of events. He's confident that with the help of small, local banks fully supportive of the project, Steever Manor will be fully built out and occupied by this time next year.