Ybor City’s Class A office asking rents jumped 52.4% over the past year to $64 per square foot, overtaking Westshore and downtown Tampa as expensive new office space at Gasworx helped push the district’s average above every other Tampa Bay submarket.
The six-story East 5th office building at Gasworx is expected to be completed in December, but asking rents have already reached $75 per square foot, compared with $46.76 in Westshore and $44.80 in downtown Tampa. The increase in Ybor City was nearly 10 times Tampa Bay’s overall Class A rent growth of 5.3%, according to Cushman & Wakefield’s third-quarter 2026 report.
Developers Darryl Shaw and KETTLER have already leased all the building’s office space, with Ferguson signing a 50,570-square-foot agreement in August to join Grow Financial Federal Credit Union, which plans to move its headquarters to 1301 E. Fourth Ave. Ferguson, a Fortune 500 distributor of plumbing, heating and construction products, expects to move in during April 2027, bringing executive leadership and employees involved in training, development and onboarding.
The two companies are expected to bring hundreds of workers to Ybor City, where Ferguson’s lease alone accounted for more than 95% of the 53,020 square feet of new office leasing recorded through September. It was also the largest new office lease signed across Tampa Bay during the third quarter, a period when Gasworx was the only office project under construction anywhere in the region.
Developers had proposed nearly 978,000 square feet of additional office space across Tampa Bay, according to Cushman & Wakefield, but none of those projects had started construction by the end of September. Thousand & One at Water Street Tampa remains one of the few alternatives for companies seeking premium offices, with asking rents reaching $76 per square foot.
Isaac Gilmore, a Tampa-based associate broker with JLL who represents office tenants, said employers are increasingly willing to pay higher rents for smaller offices in newer buildings. Gasworx will offer a rooftop deck, outdoor terraces and a lobby café and bar, along with access to restaurants and shops planned throughout the larger development.
“They’re still willing to lease space in the nicer buildings, which is why we’re seeing a flight to quality — people upgrading their office spaces even if they’re taking on less of a footprint,” Gilmore said.
The new leasing commitments have yet to bring a comparable increase in occupied space to Ybor City, which gained just 3,708 square feet through September while 23.7% of its 479,788 square feet of completed office inventory remained vacant. Ferguson and Grow Financial have not moved into Gasworx, whose higher asking rents have already contributed to the district’s rising average.
Cushman & Wakefield’s $64 average reflects the rents landlords advertise, before any discounts negotiated in a lease. Those can include months of free rent or money toward building out a tenant’s offices, allowing landlords to maintain higher asking rates without collecting the full advertised amount over the lease term. Neither Ferguson nor Grow Financial has disclosed its rental rate or concessions at Gasworx.
Gilmore said the higher rents in buildings such as Gasworx and Thousand & One are also influencing leasing decisions elsewhere in Tampa Bay, particularly among employers looking for less expensive offices.
“They’re seeking affordability, which is why vacancies are also going down in some of those tertiary submarkets,” Gilmore said.