News & Notes

Utah church pays $20.5 million for Tampa law school building

In the week's top commercial real estate news, a build-to-rent community in Naples sells, and a Texas real estate firm moves to Tampa with local talent in tow.


  • By Louis Llovio
  • | 5:00 a.m. May 5, 2024
  • | 2 Free Articles Remaining!
The Cooley Law School in Tampa sold its building to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and is looking for new space.
The Cooley Law School in Tampa sold its building to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and is looking for new space.
Image via Cooley.edu
  • Florida
  • Share

Naples/Fort Myers/Charlotte

Built to sell: Shoreham Capital, a West Palm Beach real estate firm, has bought a Naples build-to-rent community. The firm, with partnered Sabal Investment Holdings, paid $25.85 million for the development at 3196 Country Barn Road. Commercial real estate services firm Berkadia arranged the financing for the 47-unit Juniper Pointe. The project was bought in an off market, forward purchase agreement, Shoreham says in a statement. The luxury community, set to be finished later this year, will be made up of two-story townhomes with three and four-bedroom floor plans ranging from 1,900 square feet to about 2,500 square feet. Rents will start at $4,650 and top out at about $5,650. Doug Faron, a managing partner at Shoreham, says in the statement that the buy “underscores our confidence in the build-to-rent sector, particularly in strong infill locations in growth markets like Naples.” Shoreham is privately held and, according to the statement, has an “investment and development track record of over $10 billion” in assets.

The industrial-flex property on Exchange Avenue in Naples was sold to a New York investor for $4.41 million.
Image courtesy of LSI Cos.

Industrious dealing: A 20,850-square-foot industrial-flex property in Naples has sold. The property at 3963 Exchange Ave. was bought by a northern New York based LLC. The Hudson, New York company paid $4.41 million, according to LSI Cos., the Fort Myers commercial real estate firm that represented the seller, Gulfside Industrial Rentals. Gulfside bought the 2.23-acre property in 1988, but Collier County property records do not show what it paid at the time. According to a listing posted on the commercial real estate website Crexi.com, the property is made up of three stand-alone industrial flex and warehouse buildings. There are total of nine units with seven tenants. According to the listing, “All units operate under below-market, short-term, modified gross lease structures, providing a purchaser with immediate upside through reconfiguration of the existing and future lease structures.”

 

Tampa/St. Petersburg/ Pasco/Polk

The just-opened shopping center in Clearwater sold for $4.61 million.
Image courtesy of SRS Capital Markets

Field of retail dreams: A recently built shopping center in Clearwater has sold. The three-tenant property at 2420 Gulf to Bay Blvd. was bought by a private South Florida investor for $4.61 million. SRS Real Estate Partners, the firm that represented the seller and announced the deal, says the center sits on a .93-acre-site just west of U.S. Highway 19 and Clearwater Mall. It is across from a Home Depot, Sam’s Club and Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers. The tenants at the 6,750-square-foot center are Jersey Mike’s Subs, MyEyeDr., and MD Now Urgent Care.

Church school: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has bought a Riverview office building occupied by the Thomas M. Cooley Law School. The Utah church paid $20.5 million for the property at 9445 Camden Field Parkway, according to Hillsborough County property records. The Riverview building is one of two campuses operated by the Lansing, Michigan-based school. The other is in Michigan. A spokesperson for Cooley says in an email that the school is currently in talks for a new campus in the area and is leasing back the facility until that property is ready to be occupied. But an April 25 story on Mlive.com, the website for eight Michigan newspapers, may explain why the building was sold: The story calls Cooley, which once operated five campuses, “an institution in crisis,” with a fall enrollment at 431 students. The story says, “Its two-year bar passage rate is the lowest in the country, according to the most recent data, low enough to endanger its ABA accreditation. Over the past four years, it has spent millions more than it took in.” Whatever its financial state, the sale won’t hurt. County public records show Cooley paid $1.46 million for the property in 2011.

Keeps on growing: A Dallas commercial real estate firm is opening a new office in Tampa and has hired two former JLL executives to oversee it. Stream Realty Partners, which already has an office in Miami, says it is moving into the city because of a commitment to be in key markets and to get a stronger foothold in the region. A part of this strategy is hiring local talent. In this case, Stream has brought in Gary Godsey as executive managing director and Jordan Fogler as executive vice president; Fogler is member of the Business Observer’s 40 Under 40 class of 2023. Stream was founded in 2006 and, along with Tampa, currently has 15 offices nationwide and employs 1,400. According to a statement announcing the new office, the company says it “now completes more than $8.8 billion annually in office, industrial, retail, health care, land, and data center transactions.”


Sarasota/Manatee

The building previously won the "Design Award of Excellence" from the Florida chapter of the American Institute of Architects.
Courtesy image

The numbers are in: Sarasota County paid $11.95 million in March for the iconic CAN Community Health headquarters building on Fruitville Road. That’s according to county property records that have been recently updated to reflect the sale. The purchase includes the sleek glass two-story office building between Interstate 75 and downtown Sarasota as well as 1.9 acres to the east, bordering Tree Road and formerly occupied by the Julie Rohr Academy. At the time of the transaction, the listing broker Kevin Robbins with Harry E. Robbins Associates Inc. and a county spokesperson would only say the sale price was “just under” $12 million.” CAN paid $4.8 million for the property and the three acres surrounding it in 2018. CAN, which works to help people with HIV, Hepatitis C, STDs and other diseases, moved to a new headquarters space in Ybor City last year. The county’s Supervisor of Elections office led the effort to buy the building and is expected to move into the space. The prominent office building was designed by Tampa-based Alfonso Architects in 2003 and is a past winner of the "Design Award of Excellence" from the Florida chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

 

If you have news, notes or tips you want to pass along, contact [email protected]. Or you can text or call 727-371-6944.

 

author

Louis Llovio

Louis Llovio is the deputy managing editor at the Business Observer. Before going to work at the Observer, the longtime business writer worked at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Maryland Daily Record and for the Baltimore Sun Media Group. He lives in Tampa.

Latest News

Sponsored Content