Whether it was the Davis Brown Tower in downtown Des Moines or Aviva USA’s new headquarters in West Des Moines, 2007 was a solid year for the local commercial real estate industry.

Major announcements from two of the largest employers in Greater Des Moines set the theme last summer. In August, Aviva USA announced it would relocate its headquarters downtown Des Moines to a 71-acre parcel in West Des Moines. A month later, Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield announced it would build a headquarters between 11th and 14th streets in downtown Des Moines.

Bill Knapp II, chairman and chief executive officer of Knapp Properties Inc., said 2007 was one of the biggest commercial real estate years he has seen in a long time for downtown commercial movement.

“If you put Wellmark and Aviva and the two hospitals together in 2007, when they were all announced, that would have to be the largest year I can ever remember in the metro area,” he said. “The last two or three years, we’ve been fortunate to have large projects, most which have taken place downtown.”

Rick Tollakson, president of Hubbell Realty Co., agreed that the Wellmark and Aviva campus announcements made large waves in the commercial real estate community.

“The biggest impact we saw in commercial real estate was with Wellmark and Aviva moving out of downtown,” Tollakson said. “Not just moving out of downtown, but they are moving into their own buildings. That’s going to free up a lot of leased space.”

“A lot” may be an understatement; if you factor in the relocation of the Davis Law Firm to its new building, downtown Des Moines will see 750,000 square feet of office space freed up.

“Periodically, we’ve had trends like that in our marketplace, where owners (want their own buildings),” Tollakson said. “It just takes a while for the market to absorb it.”

Downtown Des Moines wasn’t the only Central Iowa newsmaker in 2007. Two major hospital expansions were announced. Ground was broken on Ankeny’s Prairie Trail, a 1,000-plus-acre complex that will house a town center and planned office space. The Village of Ponderosa in West Des Moines saw some of its 330,000 square feet of retail and commercial space filled by VisionBank, Estilo Salon & Day Spa and Central Financial Group. West Glen Town Center in West Des Moines and the East Village in Des Moines both experienced continued growth.

In early December, Marsh and McLennan Cos. Inc. announced it would expand its new Urbandale facility. The $31 million would expand the building under construction at the Paragon Office Park by another 51,000 square feet, making space for an additional 450 workers.

For Kevin Crowley, chief operating officer of Iowa Realty Commercial, seeing the Marsh and McLennan transaction slip through his company’s hands wasn’t easy.

“In 2007 we lost the Marsh deal to R&R Realty Group, and that hurt,” he said. “But I can’t tell you the number of $500,000 to $2 million deals that we did that are just the bread and butter of the business. I’d rather do that than have one King Kong deal.”

Tollakson said CB Richard Ellis/Hubbell Commercial had another record year and pointed to a solid year of occupancy in the commercial sector. “Leasing seems to be continuing on; we always like it to be stronger, but it’s pretty steady,” he said. “For the most part, the commercial sector was pretty strong.”

Gerry Neugent, president and chief operating officer of Knapp Properties, said his company’s office and industrial leasing was also “active” in 2007.

“We’ve had as good of a year as we’ve ever seen,” he said. “We have had a good volume of deals we leased.”

Crowley said leasing was “soft” for Iowa Realty Commercial and doesn’t predict more movement on the leasing side until 2010.

“The traditional office space sales are soft,” he said. “There isn’t as much velocity in the market that we’ve seen in past years. I don’t see it picking up or changing until 2010.”

Although national headlines painted a grim picture of the credit crunch and a plummeting housing market, the commercial markets in Greater Des Moines felt few effects in 2007.

“Iowa is not the coasts,” Tollakson said. “We don’t have 15 to 20 percent appreciation in home prices.”

Tollakson said because most of the credit crunch problems happened later in 2007, the effects weren’t really felt by commercial brokers. He said most brokers started dealing with people who were “serious” about buying and selling, and knew what it’s like to deal with the financial marketplace.

Crowley agreed and said the credit crunch that is plaguing the coasts and larger cities won’t hit Des Moines’ commercial sector.

“Overall, the credit crunch shouldn’t hurt us. In Greater Des Moines we’re really insolated from the major swings that the national media really like to talk about all the time,” he said. “We’re not going to see what is happening in Florida or California.”

Crowley did note one effect from the credit crunch that he saw here.

“In commercial development for the first time lenders are looking beyond the partnerships that are doing the development and looking at personal credit also,” he said. “It’s going to be business like it used to be, with stiffer underwriting.”