Church Street Exchange sells as part of $14.2M deal
With the sale Tuesday of the Church Street Exchange building and the north half of Church Street Station, the downtown entertainment district has its best shot in years of recapturing its glory days as the hub of urban Orlando nightlife.
“These are beautiful buildings, and we will focus on filling them up with quality tenants,” said new owner Digvijay “Danny” Gaekwad, who made the recent purchase in partnership with Orlando developer Rob Yeager. “This is the perfect place to start something new. It’s easy to find, and it’s iconic in my heart. I lived in Orlando in the 1980s, when Church Street was big.”
The Exchange, currently a hub for technology companies, and surrounding properties sold for $14.2 million, according to the buyers and broker who handled the deal. New investment in Church Street could potentially lift the prospects of downtown in general, which developers have targeted for at least four new high-rise buildings in 2018. The Church Street district is especially important
because it’s visible from Interstate 4, and it soon will be connected to Amway Center and the west side by the new Under-I park.
Gaekwad said he and Yeager are committed to keeping the Church Street buildings on the north side, and he’s particularly interested in encouraging more entrepreneurs and startups to grow in Orlando. They might reopen the main entrance to the Exchange building off Church Street, which has been closed for years, and bring in another restaurant.
The Exchange filled up with tech companies in 2014. Carlos Carbonell, founder of app developer Echo Interaction, said he hopes the new owners will continue to foster a techfriendly environment and also “one that a new style of entrepreneurship requires — with different and alternative work spaces, lifestyle amenities and service providers who can come in as tenants of the building and surrounding areas.”
Church Street Station includes a mix of historic buildings and newer construction added when entertainer Bob Snow and developer Cameron Kuhn revitalized the district in the 1980s. For years, it attracted hordes of tourists from the theme parks who arrived in motor coaches. Famous acts played there on a regular basis, especially country acts, such as Garth Brooks and Alan Jackson at Cheyenne Saloon.
Both of the new owners are heavily invested in business in Central Florida already. Gaekwad is an entrepreneur and developer who has been a board member with Visit Florida and Space Florida, and also owns properties in downtown Ocala. Yeager is doubling down on his investments in downtown Orlando. He also owns the historic Kress Building nearby at 15 W. Church Str. that includes the Kres Chophouse restaurant.
All of this is happening as the south side of the street was bought by another new owner, Lincoln Property, in October. Lincoln is building a 28-story tower, Church Street Plaza, next to Church Street Ballroom, which will bring more new activity to the area. That will be downtown’s first high-rise office tower in 10 years. Lincoln Property paid $5.5 million in October for the south side of the street.
The only big questions are whether Lincoln will demolish the ballroom, and whether it will keep the Cheyenne Saloon, which is considered too small to host big events but is still popular with locals because of its historic wood fixtures.
The Exchange building sale closed Tuesday, but deeds have not been recorded yet. A three-story property of about 87,000 square feet, it was built as an urban indoor shopping mall. After that closed, it briefly housed several businesses for disgraced boyband mogul Lou Pearlman, who was convicted in 2008 for running a $300 million Ponzi scheme. It stayed empty for years following that.
JLL worked to turn the Exchange building into a tech hub by providing an office to nonprofit co-working space Canvs. Other companies like PowerDMS and PlanSource filled it out. JLL handled the sale for the seller Tremont Realty Capital, a Boston-area real estate firm, which bought the station properties out of foreclosure during the Great Recession. The sale includes the buildings that house Lion’s Pride Soccer Pub & Grille and Cevíche Tapas Bar & Restaurant.
The sale, said JLL’s Carson Good, shows how Tremont and JLL successfully turned around the properties — “by bringing in new users who didn’t previously seek out the downtown market.” Good said he’s sold three properties downtown recently, and they all attracted interest from sophisticated investors who recognize that more residential properties have drawn about 20,000 new residents to downtown Orlando in recent years.