With all the negative news out there regarding office vacancies in the Emerald City metro area, there is an optimist with a note of good cheer.

Sansone Development CEO Roland Sansone is like one of Alaska’s salmon. Swimming upstream when common sense says to go the other way, Sansone is undeterred. He’s preparing for construction on his three-story office building in Henderson, located south of St. Rose Parkway and I-215.

In a time when office vacancies are at an all-time 20 percent high, Sansone is thumbing his nose at the figures. He just completed the grading and utility work on his Henderson site.

A 30 year veteran as a Las Vegas developer, Sansone is building 60,000 of the 100,000 square feet of office space that will make up the 4-building retail complex. His loan for the $25 million project was approved over a year ago, prior to the smack down on commercial loans.

If he would have obtained funding today, he would have had to pay down around 30 percent of the loan and had 50 percent of the property leased prior to approval. Two other of his planned projects are currently awaiting loan approval.

Sansone attributes the squeeze on commercial loans to the vast vacancy rate in office leases. People can purchase property for less than it costs to build.

His argument for building in a down market is his strategy. It’s all about location, location, location.. Businesses are looking for leases in prime properties that give the public visibility to them. His fits the bill. In addition, construction costs are currently down by 20 percent than during the boom years, making his projects more affordable.

Optimistic that the economy will turn around in the next year, Sansone believes that the market has “suffered the worst.”

Office leasing rates, however, continue to struggle. One lease brokerage, Colliers International, stated that newly constructed space is 76 percent vacant.

In regards to a down commercial market, Sansone maintains “… we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

Historically, this kind of tenacity worked. In recent years, however, this kind of risk caused foreclosures in the residential market, and we’re just now seeing foreclosures progress to commercial property.

It will be interesting to see how Sansone’s properties fare in the next year or two. If it turns out like it does for Alaska’s salmon, he will come out “swimmingly” well.