Trophy Tampa Tower Secures $175M Refi

Bank of America Plaza. Image courtesy of CIM Group

The owners of the 42-story Bank of America Plaza mixed-use office tower in downtown Tampa, Fla., have refinanced the trophy building with a $175 million whole loan provided by a CIM Group-managed fund.

Details on the transaction were not disclosed. The refinancing appears to replace a $134.3 million loan provided by Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. to an affiliate of Banyan Street Capital and funds managed by Oaktree Capital Management when they acquired the tower in December 2015, according to CommercialEdge data. The 2015 loan was set to mature Dec. 18, 2020, but may have had extensions.

A joint venture of Banyan Street Capital and Oaktree Capital Management purchased the Class A office tower located at 101 E. Kennedy Blvd. from MetLife Inc. for $194.4 million, CommercialEdge reported.

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Built in 1986 and renovated in 2018, Bank of America Plaza spans two city blocks making it one of the largest office developments in the Southeast. The 795,944-square-foot tower also has 23,500 square feet of retail space and an adjacent 14-level, 1,260-space parking structure connected to the building by a covered, climate-controlled skybridge. The building has a newly renovated lobby, full-service fitness center, tenant business lounge and conference facility. In July 2020, the owners began preparing the LEED Gold-certified asset for post-pandemic leasing by building out 17,000 square feet of speculative office space into new suites that would provide sanitary measures, more private offices, larger workstations and less open space.

CommercialEdge reports the building currently has 52 leases with 78,066 square feet of space available. In July 2020, two tenants had recently signed for a total of 24,000 square feet, bringing the occupancy to 92 percent at that time. The building scored a major headquarters relocation lease in October 2018, when The Mosaic Co., a producer and marketer of concentrated phosphate and potash fertilizers, moved from Minneapolis to the Bank of America Place.

Banyan Street Capital owns two other Tampa office properties—the Rivergate Tower, a 515,965-square-foot building acquired in 2015, and Tampa City Center, a 38-story, 757,425-square-foot tower also purchased with Oaktree.

In addition to being a commercial real estate owner, operator and developer, CIM Group is an active lender. Through its CIM Real Estate Debt Solutions business, CIM Group recently closed a $148 million loan for a 461,000-square-foot office campus in Tysons Corner, Va. CIM Group continues to pursue opportunities to provide senior and subordinate transitional bridge loans for commercial real estate projects with strong sponsors.