A private partnership has acquired the former site of Trump Tower Tampa, a 52-story luxury condominium project that went bust during the recession.
Brownstone Tampa Partners, LLC bought the waterfront site for $5 million from BB&T, which acquired the asset as part of a merger with Colonial Bank. The transaction included the neighboring CapTrust building, a six-story Class B
office building with 15,845 rentable square feet over 60% leased at the time the sale closed.
The buyer is an investment partnership of O,R&L Facility Services, a large property and facility management company; Owens Realty Network LLC, O,R&L’s sister real estate brokerage company, and Community Reinvestment Partners II, LP, a joint-venture investment fund of Forge Capital Partners, LLC and DeBartolo Development, LLC.
The vacant site, the only undeveloped parcel in the downtown area fronting the Hillsborough River, has such potential for large-scale development that O,R&L sought other strategic partners to maximize its resources. Owens Realty oversaw the sale and served as the owner’s broker of record.
Bob Owens, president and CEO of O,R&L, said the company chose Forge and DeBartolo because of their capital and development expertise.
"The nature of this project, with an existing revenue-producing, multi-tenant office building and an adjacent, highly-prized development parcel, affords us the opportunity to let the market come to us," said Edward Kobel, president and CEO of DeBartolo Development. Kobel is brother of Edward J. DeBartolo Jr., former owner of the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers and NHL’s Pittsburgh Penguins.
The land, previously purchased in 2004 for $16 million, was slated to be Tampa’s tallest building under the previous developer, SimDag/RoBEL LLC, which had a licensing agreement with Donald Trump. But the recession ultimately doomed the project in 2008 and BB&T, the lender as successor to Colonial Bank, received ownership.
Several prominent projects have been started or completed near the property over the past year, including the Tampa Museum of Art, Glazer Children’s Museum and USF Health’s Center for Advanced Medical Learning & Simulation (CAMLS).
"The
commercial real estate market continues to show signs of recovery, with the multi-family sector leading the way and demand for retail and
office space gradually increasing," Kobel said.
The previous owners were hit with an exponential rise in development costs when a geotechnical study "revealed requirements for expensive structural procedures," said Jarib Rodriguez, a sales professional with CB Richard Ellis Tampa. "The new ownership has complete understanding site’s development capacities."
BB&T engaged CBRE to market the property for sale. Joining Rodriguez in the sale transaction was Rick Klepal with Grubb & Ellis.
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