Gary Danklefsen faced a challenge last year when he went looking for a large plot in the Puget Sound area on which to develop office buildings. It had to be as convenient as Seattle or Bellevue and affordable for the investment partners, First Industrial Realty Trust, for which he is regional director, and the CalSters pension fund.

What little land was available in Seattle and Bellevue was expensive, and rising lease rates, plunging vacancies and space hogs like Microsoft and Google were muscling others out. So Danklefsen hunted south along the Interstate 5 corridor. He found the right spot last July, in a suburban city with a good business story to tell. DuPont, located in south Pierce County, offered cheaper development costs, a lower cost of living and less traffic congestion than Seattle and Bellevue.

In December, Danklefsen moved on it. He secured a $21 million deal with Quadrant Homes, a unit of Weyerhaeuser, to buy a 260-acre tract nestled around a championship golf course and part of the larger Northwest Landing, a master-planned community in DuPont. First Industrial and CalSters plan to develop $1 billion worth of office and high-tech manufacturing space in what could become a premier corporate campus. "I've done mega-deals not only locally but across the country," Danklefsen says. "This was exciting ... we view it as just a golden opportunity to create a real estate gem in the Puget Sound area, Pierce County and in Washington."

The deal in DuPont reflects what experts predict will become a growing trend in commercial real estate: As lease rates balloon and vacancies plummet in Seattle and Bellevue, and as traffic congestion around those cities worsens, pressure will mount for companies to set up new operations in the suburbs or split off departments there. This will occur primarily in Pierce and Snohomish counties and south King County, where cities are aggressively courting developers. "Starting this year, we're going to start seeing some commitments made," says Gary Bullington of commercial real estate brokerage Cushman & Wakefield. "Financial services companies are the easiest, with very large back-office staffs in research and accounting. Then it's going to permeate lots of industries."

And this time, unlike in 2000, the necessary ingredients for the suburban office market to take off are in place. In 2000, experts predicted that suburban areas would become high-quality, low-cost alternatives to Seattle and Bellevue, both of which were the hot places to set up shop. It didn't turn out that way because the dotcom companies that bought up office space and recruited workers in Seattle and Bellevue didn't have the growth to back it up. When the technology sector plummeted, roughly 2.5 million square feet of lower-priced sublease space became readily available in central Seattle and Bellevue. Suddenly, the suburbs became less attractive.

Today, it's a vastly different situation. The companies heating up Seattle and Bellevue are heavyweights, the region's job growth is strong despite turmoil in the housing and credit markets, and traffic congestion is a greater concern now than ever. Microsoft alone has taken 2 million square feet, and the buildings won't be completed until 2009. Joining Microsoft in gobbling up office space are Google, Amazon and Yahoo!, all with credible growth plans (although Microsoft's proposed takeover of Yahoo! could have an effect on the latter's real estate needs). "We'll continue to see tremendous upward pressure on rents because most of the buildings are spoken for," says Jeff Lyon, CEO of Seattle-based real estate firm GVA Kidder Mathews. In 2007, landlords were asking an average $35.54 per square foot for premium office space in downtown Seattle, up 25 percent from a year earlier, according to CB Richard Ellis. In Bellevue, rates climbed 28 percent, to $36.