Investors buy charter school for $6M

An investment group based in Buffalo, N.Y. has acquired the Imagine School in east Manatee County for $6.6 million.

Hemisphere Lakewood Ranch LLC, a company comprising of father-and-son investors Peter and Jules Baldassari, acquired the 33,000-square-foot charter school and adjacent land from an affiliate of Lakewood Ranch master developer Schroeder-Manatee Ranch Inc. The sale closed Monday.

The school, which has about 500 students and a capacity for 650, has roughly nine years left on a lease commitment for the two buildings involved in the sale.

Completed in 2009, the school at 10535 Portal Crossing occupies about three acres. The sale equated to a 10% capitalization rate based on the school's rent, says Ian Black, whose commercial real estate brokerage firm represented both sides in the transaction.

“What made this transaction somewhat unusual was that Hemisphere didn't know where Lakewood Ranch was at first, but as they conducted their due diligence and discovered that the ranch had just turned 20 years old, they began to recognize the area's value and the value of the school, which is a beautiful facility that's well located,” says Black, founder and president of Ian Black Real Estate.

The Imagine School in Lakewood Ranch is one of 17 such charter schools in Florida, and among 71 Imagine campuses nationwide. In 2013, Imagine's parent company generated revenue of $250 million, according to marketing materials compiled for the sales effort.