UPDATED, July 12, 11 a.m.: CP Group and DRA Advisors teamed up to buy Miami Tower, a landmark downtown office skyscraper known for its color-changing LED exterior, for $60 million less than its owner paid six years ago in a bet that the recent rush of major employers to South Florida will continue.
A source close to the deal said the joint venture paid $163.5 million for the 47-story Class A tower at 100 Southeast Second Street. Dominic Montazemi of Cushman & Wakefield represented seller Sumitomo Corporation of Americas, which paid $220 million for the property in 2016.
The buyers obtained a $144 million loan from PGIM Real Estate, records show.
Miami Tower’s occupancy dropped to 65 percent last year when law firm Carlton Fields vacated 95,000 square feet and moved to 2 MiamiCentral at 700 Northwest First Avenue, also in downtown Miami. In a statement, CP Group said the partnership plans to immediately launch a repositioning campaign intended to up the tower’s value and meet the demands of the many large companies flocking to South Florida.
Designed by Pritzker-winning architect I.M. Pei, the 636,000-square-foot office building is an iconic property that’s lit up the Miami skyline since its 1987 completion. It was built as the home for defunct CenTrust Bank, a casualty of the savings and loan financial disaster and became insolvent just a few years after moving in. In 1991, the federal government sold the building for $44 million, which reports at the time indicated was less than a third of its construction cost.
The building contains 37 floors of office space, 10 floors for parking and an 11th-floor sky lobby and event space.
The deal comes almost exactly a year after CP Group and its partners, funds managed by Rialto Capital Management and Sabal Capital Partners, paid $225 million for One Biscayne Tower, a 38-story office tower also in downtown Miami.
The Boca Raton-based firm, led by Managing Partner Angelo Bianco, acquired more than five million square feet of office space throughout the Southeast and Southwestern U.S. last year, it said in a release.
More recently, CP Group bought Las Olas Square, a downtown Fort Lauderdale office building, for $144.5 million in partnership with a fund affiliated with Stephen Ross’ Related Companies.
DRA Advisors, a New York-based investment advisor led by CEO David Luski, has 82 million square feet of commercial real estate under its management, the release states. In December, DRA paid a record $320 million for Boca Raton Innovation Campus, a 1.7 million-square-foot office park in Boca Raton.