Within months of Tupperware's decision to file for bankruptcy and put a lid on operations at its sprawling corporate campus, the multi-building headquarters complex in the Orlando, Florida, area has hit the market now that it has lost the iconic storage container maker as its sole tenant.
The 43-acre suburban campus at 161 N. Orange Blossom Trail, where Tupperware had been based since the 1950s, has once again been listed for sale after trading hands numerous times since the container company inked a sale-leaseback agreement nearly half a decade ago. A team of CBRE brokers has been hired to market the portfolio, which spans six buildings that total upward of 216,600 square feet, according to marketing materials viewed by CoStar News.
The latest decision to offload the campus lands in the aftermath of Tupperware's Chapter 11 filing last September following years of struggling with weak sales. The company, made famous for its reusable food storage containers, attempted to sell itself three times before filing for bankruptcy. In late 2024, it ultimately agreed to sell core aspects of the business as well as its brand name to its lenders. Tupperware lawyer Spencer Winters said at the time the agreement would allow the historic brand to continue while preserving jobs.
That decision did not, however, spare the company's longtime real estate footprint.
Tupperware shut down its corporate headquarters in Kissimmee late last year. Along with laying off almost 150 employees, the campus officially closed Dec. 31, leaving a hole that landlord Realty Income is now hoping someone else can attempt to fill.
At its height, Tupperware was considered one of the largest landowners in Florida and oversaw more than 1,000 acres around its suburban Orlando hub. The kitchenware maker has steadily sliced off large chunks of that footprint over the past several decades. In late 2020, it sold what remained of the campus to real estate investment firm O'Connor Capital Partners for $43 million.
As part of the deal, Tupperware inked a sale-leaseback arrangement in which the company signed an 11-year deal that included several options to remain in the space for up to 25 years.
New York-based O'Connor then sold the campus several months later to Spirit Realty Capital, a real estate investment trust that was acquired by Realty Income last year for about $9.3 billion.
On the table
As one of the most valuable assets or expensive liabilities, a company's real estate is often the first thing put up for grabs in the face of broader corporate turmoil, such as a bankruptcy, liquidation efforts or merger.
Along with plans to auction off leases for hundreds of its retail outposts, Party City, for example, extended efforts earlier this year to wind down operations and shed all remaining assets, including its corporate campus in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey, where it had been based for nearly half a decade.
The national party goods retailer has been trying to reassign the lease for its main office at 100 Tice Blvd., a property that includes roughly 209,000 square feet and is available through a term that extends through October 2038. Party City filed for bankruptcy last December and has since closed about 700 of its former locations.
It isn't yet clear what the demand for a single-tenant office campus in the Orlando suburbs will be without its primary tenant.
While it could retain its office use, CBRE is also marketing the multi-building complex as a potential redevelopment opportunity that could ultimately transform the site into alternative purposes such as warehousing, manufacturing, cold storage, parking or as a distribution center.
On the whole, Orlando's office market had been uniquely resilient to the impacts of the pandemic, yet a slowdown in leasing and influx of recently completed developments collided in 2024 to create the market's weakest year for demand in about 25 years, according to CoStar analysis.
The office vacancy rate has climbed to nearly 10%, and while that's considerably lower than the national average of 14%, it still underscores the challenges the Orlando area faces as both the number of leases and total leasing volume have sunk compared to their pre-pandemic annual averages.