Hotel and motel building was flat, while office construction fell 1.1 percent.

In turn, they said, the next round of office construction is not far behind.

But for larger tenants, new office construction is needed to keep them downtown.

The July level of office construction was up 9.5 percent over the year-earlier month.

In recent years, Midtown has been the site of increasing office construction.

The brothers bought out their father in 1969 and began to expand into office construction.

Many in the industry predicted they would never see speculative office construction again.

At the time, the two buildings were the first new office construction in the city since 1931.

"But we don't expect to see much office construction next year," she said.

Since then, even with the decline of private office construction, at least 2,000 more spaces have been added.