City National Bank of Florida Signs Record Miami Lease
The state’s second-largest bank committed to 145,000 square feet.
City National Bank of Florida is consolidating its growing Miami-Dade County workforce at 2701 S. Le Jeune Road, a 15-story office building in Coral Gables, Fla. The state’s second-largest bank will occupy 144,878 square feet at the property under the largest office lease in South Florida in at least two years.
The building will be renamed as City National Financial Center when CNBFL relocates in 2026. CBRE handled the transaction for the tenant and the landlord, Ponte Gadea, according to Commercial Observer.
The move marks a relocation within Coral Gables for CNBFL. The bank’s leadership team is currently at 2855 S. Le Jeune Road, in a 124,168-square-foot building it owns.
A Coral Gables office building
Ponte Gadea acquired the building in December 2009 for $62 million from Flagler Realty & Development, according to CommercialEdge data. Completed a year earlier, the Mediterranean-style property served as the headquarters of Bacardi USA, which occupied more than 207,000 square feet until 2023, when it moved to the nearby Plaza Coral Gables.
The LEED Gold-certified building is currently undergoing a multimillion-dollar renovation. Located on 1.3 acres, it has 210,000 square feet of office space and 20,000 square feet of retail space. Floorplans average 19,508 square feet.
The property has a fitness center and more than 800 parking spaces in both above-ground and subterranean lots. The building is near major transportation hubs and has easy access to dining, shopping and entertainment.
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Tenants include Quirch Foods and Infiniti Coral Gables, which has a ground-floor showroom. Quirch, a large regional and international food enterprises, leased about 30,000 square feet at the building in November 2015.
CBRE’s Matthew Goodman, Jeff Gordon and Ramon Hernandez represented CNB, while Eric Groffman, Cameron Tallon and Randy Carballo represented the building’s ownership.
Bank moves
The regional bank’s new lease is part of a consolidation strategy aimed at will bringing together teams from downtown Miami, Brickell Financial District and Coral Gables, the Commercial Observer reported. CNBFL also plans to expand its workforce by 20 percent over the next two years.
In August, CNBFL opened a new 4,200-square-foot office in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., to serve commercial and private banking clients in the growing markets of Palm Beach and Martin counties, including the communities of Palm Beach Gardens, Jupiter, Tequesta, West Palm Beach and Palm Beach Islands. The Palm Beach expansion aligned with the bank’s expansion in other key markets outside South Florida, including Orlando and Tampa.
Strong, stable market
The Coral Gables office market has matured into a strong, stable market due to its location in Miami-Dade County, demographics and Mediterranean architecture. In recent years office tenants which couldn’t find space in the supply-constrained Miami Central Business District began leasing in Coral Gables, Colliers’ Tom Farmer told Commercial Property Executive late last year.
Leasing activity has rebounded in the first quarter of 2025 for the entire Miami market after a sluggish 2024, Avison Young reported. The CNBFL deal was easily the largest lease transaction of the quarter with 85 percent of all leasing activity occurring for spaces below 5,000 square feet.
The total vacancy rate for the Coral Gables submarket in Q1 2025 was 14.3 percent, up 3.9 percent from the previous quarter, according to Avison Young data. But it was stronger than the Brickell submarket, which had a total vacancy rate of 16.6 percent, and downtown Miami, which recorded an 18.2 percent vacancy rate.
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