Gateway Professional Centre sells for $45.2 million

TerraCap Management LLC has sold the four-building, Gateway Professional Centre office complex in Sarasota for $45.2 million, a 22% gain from the amount the Bonita Springs investment firm paid in May 2015.

The 246,941-square-foot complex, at 301-551 N. Cattlemen Road near Interstate 75, was purchased by Boston-based Taurus Investment Holdings — the second time the 20-year-old collection of three-story buildings has been purchased by a firm from the New England city.

Gateway Professional was 95.1% committed at the time of the sale to Taylor Morrison, London Bay Homes, Jackson Hewitt and Global Financial Private Capital, among others.

Commercial real estate brokerage firm JLL, in a Holliday Fenoglio Fowler L.P. (HFF) legacy deal, represented TerraCap in the transaction and brought Taurus into the deal. JLL acquired HFF on July 1.

Ike Ojala, a JLL senior director, who together with the firm’s Hermen Rodriguez and Matthew McCormick worked on the transaction, says Gateway Professional’s “exceptional accessibility throughout the region” drew potential investors.

“This was a well-timed, deep value, off-market transaction that has performed quite well for our investors,” says TerraCap founder and managing director W. Stephen Hagenbuckle, in a statement.

Over the past two years, TerraCap has been divesting itself of a handful of office and industrial assets in Florida, distributing high double-digit investment dividends to fund investors and redeploying capital into assets in North Carolina and elsewhere.

Founded in 1976, Taurus maintains holdings in 15 markets and has bought and sold more than 40 million square feet in its four-decade history. In all, the company has acquired more than $6.5 billion worth of real estate, it says.

TerraCap acquired Gateway Professional, on 35 acres, in May 2015 for $37.1 million.

Though its sale represents a significant gain, by comparison the value of the deal remains 18% less than the amount the project sold for in July 2006, when TA Associates Realty, also of Boston, bought it for $55 million, according to property records.

At the time, Gateway Professional was primarily occupied by major homebuilders like Lennar Corp., which housed regional operations within the four buildings.