The sold-out crowd at the AZRE Forum, which took place Thursday at The Camby, heard a lot of good news.

“Many people who went through the recession and are now experience the longest expansion of their careers are wondering when it’s going to be over,” said Bryon Carney, market leader at Cushman & Wakefield. “Our unemployment is around 4 percent, we are growing the economy and the tech sector. So I feel we have a longer period of expansion to go than one might think. I think we have another two or three more good years.”

“We are going to be fine as long as we behave ourselves,” joked Molly Ryan Carson, senior vice president and market leader of the Southwest Region for Ryan Companies, who added, “Tempe and North Scottsdale are still the prom queens for development.”

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Each year, AZRE magazine hosts the AZRE Forum, bringing together panels of Arizona’s top commercial real estate experts for a mid-year update and forecast. 

The AZRE Forum was broken down into three panel discussions — a brokerage panel, a construction and development panel and a “State of the State panel.” Sponsors of the AZRE Forum were Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie, Alliance Bank of Arizona, Skanska and Gammage & Burnham. The expert panelists were:

Brokerage panel: 

Pete Bolton, Pete Bolton Company (moderator) 

Leroy Breinholt, Commercial Properties Inc. 

Bryon Carney, Cushman & Wakefield 

Scott Maxwell, Cresa

Bob Mulhern, Colliers International 

Cathy Teeter, CBRE  

Construction and development panel: 

Pete Bolton, Pete Bolton Company (moderator) 

Kimberly Davids, The Weitz Company 

Keith Earnest, VanTrust Real Estate 

Andrew Geier, Layton Construction 

David Krumwiede, Lincoln Property Company 

Molly Ryan Carson, Ryan Companies 

State of the State panel: 

Grady Gammage Jr., Gammage & Burnham (moderator) 

Chris Camacho, Greater Phoenix Economic Council 

Don Garner, Alliance Bank of Arizona 

Cheryl Lombard, Valley Partnership 

Aidan McSheffrey, SRP 

Heidi Short, Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie  

“A lot of people ask where we are at in the game,” Earnest said. “We are getting record levels for rent, we cannot build industrial space fast enough. For industrial, I say we are only in the third inning. For the other sectors, we may be in the fifth or sixth.”

Other panelists echoed the positive outlook.

“Everybody is growing,” Maxwell said. “We are still on the trajectory up. We have a lot of runway left.”