Developers buoyed by rising rents and shrinking space. (Michael Covarrubias, president of The Martin Group; Joe Selger, president of Vintage Properties)(Interview)

With commercial rents sky-high and percentage of available space plummeting well into the single digits, the need for new development has flourished.

To fill that need, the developers on this year's List of the Largest Commercial Developers in the Bay Area continue to build at a healthy pace. Top-ranked Lincoln Property Co. and the Martin Group each developed more than 1 million square feet locally this year, with Transpacific Development Co. and Catellus Development Corp. not far behind at 900,000 square feet each.

That's actually less than 1996, when Lincoln completed 1.3 million square feet and Martin notched up nearly 2 million square feet, but still more than …