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Higher interest rates and a tightening capital market may have slowed the region’s commercial real estate industry in 2023, but the deals kept coming. From Pasco County to Immokalee in eastern Collier County, developments were announced, land was sold and buildings of all sorts changed hands.
Car washes, storage facilities, shopping centers, office buildings, industrial sites, vacant properties all saw action. Two major resorts opened, a luxury hotel opened after Hurricane Ian shut it down for a year and two significant pieces of agricultural property hit the market.
On the residential side, meanwhile, builders acquired thousands of acres and multifamily, while cooling off a bit, remained a force. And we can’t talk about commercial real estate without mentioning luxury condos. Are we ever going to run out of people who can afford multimillion condo units? The builders behind dozens of residential towers in the works across the region, at leased based on a look at the year's largest transactions, don’t seem to think so.
With those themes in mind, a look back at some of the year's most interesting happenings in each region the Business Observer covers includes:
Land grab: In March, a 5,500-acre site hit the market in Collier County. Gopher Ridge is just north of Immokalee, and immediately northwest of the Immokalee Airport. It is in the heart of county’s fruit and vegetable farmland. According to the listing brokers, SVN Saunders Ralston Dantzler, the property, which has historically produced high-yielding round oranges for juice production, is primed for “future residential development with 1,763 acres with a (future land use) of 4-8 units per acre and large acreage land banking.” The asking price for Gopher Ridge: $57.8 million. (In August, the price was dropped by $19.8 million to $38 million.)
Cost of Ian mounts: In September, a historic piece of land on Fort Myers Beach sold for $52 million, the result of Hurricane Ian. The buyer was local developer the Seagate Development Group. The 10-acre property was once the site of the Red Coconut RV Park, which had been on that spot since 1925 and once housed the city’s first post office, voting precinct and police station, according to LSI Cos. which represented Seagate. The park was destroyed during Hurricane Ian. According to a statement from Seagate, “the office, store and maintenance building all were destroyed. And that iconic beach house, which was brought in by barge in 1932, floated off its foundation and down Estero Boulevard.” Fran Myers, who bought the park with her late husband Tom in 1982, and her family decided to sell rather than rebuild.
A banker's life for me: In February, the New York bank Citi unveiled a new nearly $60 million amenities building on the bank’s 100-acre Tampa campus. The 113,000-square-foot amenities center, a renovation of an existing building on the property, is a modern food hall of sorts that includes about a half-dozen food vendors and Starbucks, along with areas for the 10,000 employees working on the site to eat, gather and work. In addition, there is a fitness center, medical center, physical therapist, a nutritionist and, on the second floor, open collaboration spaces, meeting rooms and conference rooms. Nick Della Serra, Citi’s Tampa president, said the company built the new center because “we want to continue to invest in our employee base here.” The campus, which is on Tampa’s east side, is microcosm of Citi and one of the company’s largest facilities, he says. Employees on the campus work in several areas, including wealth management, human resources, legal compliance, internal audit risk, operations and technology. (According to a Dec. 6 store from Reuters, Citi will undergo a “sweeping reorganization” in the first quarter of 2024 which could include thousands of layoffs. It is not clear yet how the reorganization will affect the bank’s Tampa operation.)
A whole lot of subs: Late this year, Publix bought two shopping centers in Hillsborough County. Property records show the Lakeland grocery giant paid a total of $62.9 million for the centers — one in Brandon and one in Tampa — buying them under the name Real Sub LLC. State corporation records show Real Sub’s principal address is 3300 Publix Corporate Parkway in Lakeland. That is the address of the grocer’s corporate headquarters. The Brandon center, at 11255 Causeway Blvd., sold for $38 million, records show. According to a LoopNet profile and county property records, the 177,696-square-foot Publix anchored center was built in 1998. Its previous owner, Ohio-based Site Centers Corp., paid $18.27 million for the property in 2009. The other property is the Publix-anchored North Pointe Center at 15001 N. Dale Mabry Highway in Tampa. Publix paid $24.9 million for the 107,994-square-foot center, built in 1990. It too was previously owned by Site Centers but county records don’t show what it paid for that property.
Stay put: In October, the Nokomis manufacturing facility belonging to Tervis Tumbler Co. sold. But the insulated drinkware company isn’t going anywhere. Rogan Donelly, executive chairman of the board at Tervis, says it is leasing back about 60,000 square feet of the property, which is all it needs after adopting a hybrid work model.. The property was sold for $15.35 million to Bulgio Capital, an investment firm with offices in Pennsylvania and Israel. Tervis paid $1.8 million for the property in October 2004, according to Sarasota County property records.
LA living: In April, the DeSota apartment building in downtown Sarasota sold to a California investment firm. According to Sarasota County property records, the complex was bought by an LLC with an address that matches that of JRK Property Holdings on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. The sale price was $81.5 million, which comes out to $452,777 a unit. The 10-story, 180-unit building at 1415 2nd St. opened in 2017 on property that once housed the United Way. The DeSota has units ranging from 777-square-foot one-bedrooms to 2,744-square-foot three bedrooms. The monthly rent for the smallest unit starts at $2,820 and tops out at $8,749 for the largest, according to complex’s website on April 21. JRK was founded in 1991, according to its website. It has owned and operated a portfolio of more than 80,000 multifamily and hotel units in 30 states totaling more than $15 billion. The building’s previous owner was Bluerock Real Estate of New York, which paid $80.3 million for it in 2019.
As always, as we head into 2024, remember, if you have news, notes or tips you want to pass along, contact [email protected]. Or you can text or call 727-371-6944.
This story was updated to reflect Rogan Donelly's correct title at Tervis.
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