Boca’s Crocker Partners pays $170M for IBM site
Birthplace of personal computer may grow to add housing, shops.
BOCA RATON — Crocker Partners is the buyer of the iconic former IBM campus in Boca Raton, which went up for sale last year not only as an office site but as a possible future home for apartments and shops.
Boca Raton-based Crocker, together with New York-based Rialto Capital and Siguler Guff, this month paid about $170 million for the campus, now known
as the Boca Raton Innovation Center, a Crocker official said Tuesday.
The property consists of the famous 1.8 million-square-foot IBM building that was the birthplace of the personal computer.
A number of companies now lease space in the sprawling building, known as the largest office building in Florida, and plans are to keep them there, said Angelo Bianco, Crocker Partners’ managing partner.
But Bianco said the partners are exploring additional uses for the 130-acre site, including the construction of rental apartments on some of the land, plus space for shops and maybe a hotel, too.
These mixed-use projects are right up Crocker’s alley. The company built Mizner Park, a shopping, dining, office and apartment center in downtown Boca Raton.
Making the IBM property
extra valuable is its location near major transportation, Bianco said. It sits just west of Interstate 95, between the Yamato Road and new Spanish River Boulevard entrances and exits. There’s also a Tri-Rail station on the campus.
Bianco said the team is looking at the site as a “village,” centrally located in the city with plenty of additional space for more uses.
“It’s so large that over time, we could add new buildings or replace more outdated ones,” Bianco said.
However, there are no plans to tear down the famous Y-shaped main building, Bianco said.
The building was designed for IBM by Marcel Breuer and Thomas Gatje and featured buildings for administration and product testing, development labs, manufacturing and distribution.
The building’s unique Y-shaped design was considered an engineering marvel for its day. According to Susan Gillis, Boca Raton Historical Society curator, it’s still considered an “outstanding example” of the Brutalist style of architecture, which often features exposed concrete construction and flourished among government and institutional clients from the 1950s to 1970s.
The property, however, does not have a historic designation from either the city of Boca Raton (which could limit any change to the buildings) or the National Register of Historic Places.
The campus has had several owners since IBM sold it in 1996 to a local investor group for $46 million. The sale came after the computer maker transferred manufacturing, and later software development, to other IBM sites in the country.
The first investor group to buy the property renamed it Blue Lake Corporate Center. Another ownership group then changed the name to the T-Rex Corporate Center.
The latest owners before the Crocker group, San Francisco-based Farallon Capital Management and New York-based Next Tier HD, changed the name again to its current moniker, the Boca Raton Innovation Campus.
Today, the property is about 70 percent leased. Tenants include Bluegreen Corp., Tyco Integrated Security, TransUnion, Modernizing Medicine and MDVIP.
Bianco said plans are to improve the condition of the office campus by adding Wi-Fi in all common areas and improving the food offerings in the cafeteria.
Other planned improvements include the addition of a dry cleaner and shoe repair, Bianco said. The property already features an on-site day care, walking trails, fitness center and a private shuttle to Tri-Rail.