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Executives at FCCI Insurance Group, one of the largest non-government employers in the Sarasota-Manatee region, have something not seen in several years: Faith in a rebound of the local commercial real estate market.
This isn't mere idle chitchat or optimism because they are tired of being pessimistic. In fact, FCCI intends to build a four-story Class A office building on land it owns in Lakewood Ranch, on the Sarasota County side of the master-planned community. The 105,000-square-foot building would be for new tenants, either a local company expansion or a business recruited to town, not FCCI.
The building is in the early planning stages, and FCCI executives say they won't build it until a majority is pre-leased. “We're not going to launch spec,” says TrammellCrow Co. Senior Managing Director Robert Abberger, a consultant on the project. “No one is launching spec, unless you are in Washington, D.C.”
Still, the project has generated buzz in the commercial real estate community, a group regularly on the lookout for new space it can show clients. Moreover, economic development organizations, like the Economic Development Corp. of Sarasota County, love to talk up new spaces to prospective relocation targets.
“We have had the land in a position for a build-to-suit situation for some time and actually placed our building plans on hold given the turn in the economy,” FCCI Senior Vice President Lisa Krouse says. “We feel there is now a loosening of the market and Lakewood Ranch has shown promise and growth.”
Abberger says the building will be loaded with “green” features, from an insulated steep-slope metal roof with a high Solar Reflective Index, to highly efficient air-conditioning systems. FCCI will offer naming rights to tenants, and the building is permit-ready. Says Abberger: “We are optimistic this will be the precedent setting building where we all get our mojo back.”
The rub, of course, is to find tenants.
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