Mosaic at Forum Apartments is listed for sale

Fresh from the $71.4 million sale of the 324-unit Spectra Apartments in Fort Myers, commercial real estate brokerage firm Cushman & Wakefield is bringing another Class A multifamily project in Lee County to market.

The firm has been retained by St. Petersburg-based Mosaic Development to sell its Mosaic at Forum, a 252-unit community also in Fort Myers.

The project, which consists of 10 three-story buildings on 13 acres, was completed in December. Visible from Interstate 75, the apartments are in close proximity to employers such as Gartner, Hertz, Chico’s FAS and Arthrex, to name a few, as well as Florida Gulf Coast University.

“The Spectra engagement proved that Fort Myers is on the radar of a great deal of investment capital,” says Brad Capas, who together with Cushman & Wakefield’s Florida Multifamily Investment Sales team members Luis Elorza and Robert Givenof, will lead the sales process for Mosaic.

 “It’s been exciting to see the investor response.”

Capas adds Cushman & Wakefield hopes to secure offers on the 3100 Champion Ring Road by the end of next month.

Despite ranking among the fastest-growing areas in the nation for population, with ample white-collar job growth and unemployment of about 3%, Fort Myers has not experienced the level of multifamily development that has occurred in Tampa or Sarasota.

In the past three years, only a handful of new projects containing roughly 600 new units have been built in the Lee County city — though several other projects are planned.

“Fort Myers is a market that certainly has not been overdeveloped,” Capas says. “Building there has been much more measured, and the market has demonstrated strength and rent growth has continued, which is what investors look for.”

Roxanne Amoroso, a Mosaic principal, says the Spectra sale — a community developed by Naples-based Stock Development — to Coastal Ridge Real Estate was just “one of many influences” that led the company to decide to sell the complex.

“We just think it’s a favorable time to sell,” Amoroso says. “We’re responding to market conditions and activity.”