Raymond James buys Carillon buildings

One of the Gulf Coast's largest companies has quietly acquired a trio of St. Petersburg office buildings in the Gateway section of the city, property records show.

Raymond James Financial Inc. bought the three buildings — at 740, 780 and 800 Carillon Parkway — for $52.03 million from an affiliate of Cardinal Point Management.

The three buildings, which include a pair of four-story structures and a two-story property, are adjacent to the company's four-building corporate headquarters in the Carillon Business Park.

In all, the three buildings contain 325,456 square feet and were delivered between 1987 and 1991. Cardinal Point acquired the properties for $41.5 million in December 2012, records show.

“They had occupied roughly 33,000 square feet in one of the buildings and wanted to expand their space in Carillon,” says Greg Williams, a cofounder and principal at Cardinal Point, of the mid-December transaction. “They told us they'd prefer to buy than to lease additional space, so we cut a deal. It was a win-win transaction.”

Raymond James, which generates roughly $5 billion in annual revenue, occupies about 900,000 square feet in its 15-acre Raymond James Financial Center in Carillon, where it has operated since 1987.

Fueled by stock market gains of recent years and growing name recognition by investors nationwide, Raymond James has been growing steadily during the past three decades.

Its most recent development in the financial center, a nine-story tower comprising 300,000 square feet, was completed in 2004.

Steve Hollister, a Raymond James spokesman, declined to comment on the firm's plans for the Carillon Parkway properties.