Demetrios Panteleakis

Few people know downtown Springfield’s commercial heart better than Demetrios Panteleakis. As president of McMillan Group, he represents close to two million square feet of Class A office space between Tower Square and 1550 Main Street, the building commonly known as the Old Federal Building.

He has also watched Metro Center transform. Over the last decade, after a concerted push by the city and the business community to make downtown safe, attractive, and accessible, it has become what Panteleakis calls the literal nerve center of the business community — where financial services, insurance firms, and law offices sit within twenty yards of one another, close enough that you can conduct nearly any business without leaving the block.

That density, he notes, is exactly what makes Metro Center work — and exactly why keeping downtown’s anchors, the courthouse among them, within the central business district matters so much to what comes next.