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He said the downtown vacancy is at five per cent. “It wouldn’t shock me if we got below three per cent,” he told Postmedia.

“Before we saw that economic downturn (of 2009), we were at 2.5 per cent and it absolutely would not shock me if we got back to those numbers.”

In the 2007-2008 period, the economy was doing well, he said. “The law firms were doing well, the accounting firms were doing well, the mining companies were doing well. Everyone was doing really well.”

Large U.S.-based or international tech firms are driving today’s market, he said.

“(In 2007-08) we didn’t really see a lot of the larger U.S.-based and international companies come into our market place (to) put a substantial flag in the ground like they have over the past little bit,” he said. “Quite frankly … I think it’s going to continue to happen going forward.”

He said the two main examples are WeWork, the co-working giant, and Amazon.

“Amazon was not here five years ago,” Gardner said. “Now they’re a very substantial presence in our city and are committed to even more product that will be coming online.”

Amazon announced a deal earlier this year to occupy 416,000 sq. ft. of the old Post Office building redevelopment on Georgia Street that will add 1.1 million sq. ft. of office space to the existing structure.

Amazon also took 90,000 sq. ft. at the Exchange Tower at 475 Howe Street, according to a summary of recent deals in the Avison Young report.

WeWork is also quickly becoming one of the largest tenants in the marketplace, Gardner said, referring to the New York-based co-working space provider, which has several floors at the Bentall Centre towers among its local inventory and will also be occupying two floors at the Main Alley campus development by Westbank Corp. and Ryan Holmes of Hootsuite.