West Palm Beach’s Centurion Tower has a new owner.
C-III Capital Partners just paid $26 million to purchase the office tower from TA Realty, marking the latest in a series of big-ticket South Florida office acquisitions by large financial firms.
Palm Beach County records show C-III, using an affiliated company, bought the 14-story building at 1601 Forum Place in the city’s Palm Beach Lakes corridor. With 143,966 square feet of rentable space, the deal breaks down to just under $181 per foot.
Leasing agent Shelbi Quinn of NAI/Merin Hunter Codman told The Real Deal that no brokers were involved in the sale. Quinn added that she and Neil Merin would stay on as the building’s leasing team now that the deal has closed.
The building was last purchased by TA Realty as part of a $60 million, three-building portfolio deal in 2008 for about $177 per square foot.
Quinn said Centurion Tower is one of the only Class A office buildings in the Palm Beach Lakes corridor, making it an attractive investment. The sale has a slightly cheaper price per square foot than the $23 million sale of the city’s Bank of America building on Monday, which came in at $209 per foot.
Data from the CoStar Group shows the building has asking rents averaging $17.50 per square foot, triple net. The tower’s largest tenant is the Oxbow Corp., an energy marketing and production company, which takes up 46,446 square feet.
This is C-III Capital Partners’ second South Florida office purchase in as many months, following the investment manager’s $52.5 million acquisition of the three-building Fairway Office Center in August. Both deals show the company’s appetite for older Class A properties with stable occupancy in suburban areas.
For TA Realty, the sale marked a slight price premium over the $60 million the asset manager paid eight years ago as part of the portfolio deal. The company is based in Boston and has some $7.4 billion in assets under its care.
The deal was financed with an $18.73 million loan from Keybank National Association, according to county records.