Entrepreneurs pay lofty prices for Clematis Street office space. (West Palm Beach, Florida)

What a difference three years makes. As recently as 1995, office space on Clematis Street in West Palm Beach leased for $4, maybe $5, a square foot.

Today, the latest attraction on the energetic street is office lofts leasing for $15 to $20 a square foot.

Lofts are large unfinished spaces leased at nominal rents. They appealed to a starving-artist lifestyle because a tenant could live and work cheaply in the wide-open space.

But in the 1990s in West Palm Beach, young entrepreneurs in startup and fast-track businesses are creating demand for these spaces.

On Clematis Street, lofts are not your father's offices.

"It's not your old, established blue-chip companies in an industrial park zone," said Nigel Horsfall, property manager for Renaissance Partners, a real estate investment …