Fort Myers office park sells for record-'shattering' $92.5 million

A 41-acre business park in Fort Myers has sold for $92.5 million, marking the largest industrial sale in Southwest Florida’s history.

The property that was sold is the 454,200-square-foot CenterLinks Business Park on Oriole Road near Alico Road just off Interstate 75.

The buyer was a Pennsylvania real estate trust run by EQT Exeter.

LQ Commercial, the Fort Myers commercial real estate firm that represented the seller, CenterLinks Associates, called the deal “the largest industrial sale ever recorded in Southwest Florida” and it “not only signifies a pivotal moment for the region but also stands as Florida's largest sale this year.”

CoStar verified the claim last week saying that “according to our industrial sales data, that would be the largest sale in SW Florida, which for this purpose includes Sarasota, Charlotte, Lee and Collier counties.” 

The biggest deal for an individual industrial property before that was the 2016 sale of the 907,237-square-foot Meridian distribution center in Sarasota, for $47.5 million. 

Wherever its place in the rankings, the sale price is a monumental amount for an industrial property in the area, trading for what major apartment complexes were selling for just two or three years ago.

“The industrial sector continues to be the star of the Southwest Florida commercial real estate market,” Adam Palmer, LQ’s managing principal, says in a statement announcing the sale.

“The unprecedented success of this sale underscores the transformative impact of collaboration and strategic planning.”

Palmer and Mike Doyle, LQ's senior associate, brokered the deal.

The buyer is an LLC named Exeter 9121 CenterLinks Commerce which, according to the state’s Division of Corporations database, shares an address with EQT and also lists several of the company’s executives as managers. Among them is EQT’s CFO Peter Lloyd.

EQT has 50 offices in 22 countries and $30 billion in real estate assets under management, according to its website. Its U.S headquarters is in Radnor, Pennsylvania, outside Philadelphia, and its main European office is in London.

The company’s online portfolio also shows it already has a presence in Florida and along the Gulf Coast, with 11 properties south from Tampa to Fort Myers and east to Lakeland and Haines City.

As for LQ Commercial, it was long known as LandQwest Commercial and has offices in Fort Myers, Naples, Tampa and Orlando. According to its website, it employees about 60 people.

Palmer, who started his career as software engineer for Lucent Technologies, was named to the Business Observer's 40 Under 40 list in 2015.