Starwood Capital completes $143 million Urban Centre deal

Starwood Capital Group has completed a $143.1 million deal to acquire the two-building Urban Centre office complex in the Westshore business district of Tampa, according to Hillsborough County property records.

Affiliates of the Miami-based investment giant finalized the purchase of the 4830-4890 W. Kennedy Blvd. property on March 13, records show.

Starwood bought the twin nine-story complex, whose office tenants include American Momentum Bank, Tribridge and Colliers International, from Teachers Insurance & Annuity Association of America. Urban Centre is also home to the Westshore Grand Hotel, the Centre Club and Shula’s Steakhouse, among others.

Teachers Insurance had owned the 576,000-square-foot property since paying $105.5 million for it in 2005.

“It’s a good price, and roughly what we anticipated,” says Clay Witherspoon, a principal and managing director with commercial real estate brokerage firm Avison Young, in Tampa.

“It’s good for Westshore, too, and shows the maturity of the market,” he adds. “And Starwood is a strong institutional owner, one that’s been in this market before.”

Urban Centre’s sale marks the largest office deal in the Tampa or St. Petersburg market since December 2015, when Banyan Street Capital and Oaktree Capital Management teamed up to buy the 42-story Bank of America Plaza tower in downtown Tampa for $193.5 million.

Urban Centre is expected to be one of the largest office sales in the Tampa Bay area in 2018. Witherspoon notes that at a purchase price of $260 per square foot, the sale is roughly $65 per square foot, or 20%, below the amount that would be required to develop a new Class A office project.

Starwood, one of the most active commercial real estate investors in the nation, owns dozens of major properties along the Gulf Coast.

Two years ago, for instance, it paid $95.25 million to acquire the 936-unit Gulfstream Isles Apartments in Fort Myers, one of the largest multifamily rental transactions ever executed along the Gulf Coast.

Even with the sale, Teachers Insurance will continue to have a major presence in the region. Most notably, the firm owns a half-interest, together with a Dutch pension fund, in the 1.2 million-square-foot International Plaza mall, also in Tampa’s Westshore area.

Commercial real estate brokerage firm JLL represented Teachers Insurance in the transaction.

Neither officials from Starwood nor JLL returned telephone calls for comment on the sale.