Anchor leases drive 3 office projects
Three Orlando-office projects are taking shape — or are about to — in the midst of relatively tight lending rules that call for pre-leased anchor tenants.
“Lenders are being very careful about funding anything that is speculative, making it difficult for traditional developers to get buildings out of the ground,” said Greg Morrison, managing director for Avison Young’s Orlando office. The group released a new report on the office market in the Metro Orlando area.
In Lake Mary/Heathrow, 500 TownPark is underway with 135,000 square feet with 80 percent pre-leased by CNA.
In Lake Nona, another 50,000 square feet of offices are under construction in concert with the USTA’s national tennis campus.
In downtown Orlando, Lincoln Property Company announced its 28-story, mixed-use Tremont Tower will be anchored by Fairwinds Credit Union, along with HuntonBrady Architects and Austin Commercial LP. Construction is expected to start this year, with delivery in 2018.
Former Shells
Orlando-area convenience store owner Amin Gulamali made several recent purchases, including 12 acres at 1616 Semoran Blvd., Orlando. He paid $1.05 million. The property is next to an Aldi supermarket and a RaceTrac station.
In addition, he purchased the old Shells restaurant site at 852 Lee Road for $510,000 and intends to convert it into a retail center. He was represented in both deals by David Lundberg and Greg Kainz of Commercial Equity Partners.
The team also represented the seller, Marmac
Inc., on the vacant-land purchase. The Shells property had been owned by a group including Philip J. Sanfilippo, Carl Sanfilippo and Christina Burnett. They were represented by Bill Miller of Re/Max.
Flight sim lease
A flight-simulation and avionics-systems firm, Veraxx Engineering Corporation, leased 6,090 square feet at Ganesh Business Park, 5707 Dot Com Court, Oviedo. NAI Realvest Principal Tom Kelley and Associate Chris Adams represented Veraxx. The landlord, Ganesh Holdings, was represented by Sher Tolan of Allied Commercial Real Estate.
Research Park
City Office REIT purchased five buildings in Central Florida Research park for $49.8 million.
CBRE’s Ron Rogg and Chip Wooten represented the seller, DRA Advisors. The purchase included 271,192 square feet of offices at Science Drive and Technology Parkway.
UCF garage contenders
The University of Central Florida selected semifinalists for its proposed downtown parking garage.
They are: PCL Construction Services and Walker Parking Consultants; The Beck Group and NBBJ; Clancy & Theys and HuntonBrady Architects; The Haskell Company, Collage and PGAL. The university plans to select a finalist in September.