Downtown Miami Office High-Rise Commands $117M

By Scott Baltic, Contributing Editor

Brickell City Tower

In what evidently is one of the larger office building transactions in South Florida so far in 2018, a joint venture of Banyan Street Capital, Independencia Asset Management and Crocker Partners has sold Miami’s Brickell City Tower. CBRE Capital Markets represented the sellers in the deal.

The buyer was not officially disclosed, but the South Florida Business Journal reported that the buyer was Madison-OFC Brickell FL LLC, an affiliate of New York Life, and that the purchase price was $117.3 million.

The 33-story, 291,554-square-foot Class A tower, at 80 SW 8th St., had earlier this year undergone a $6.4 million renovation that included a redesigned and expanded lobby, common-area upgrades to multi-tenant floors, a full elevator modernization, and a new conference center and tenant lounge.

Brickell City Tower is 87 percent occupied by tenants from varied sectors, including legal, banking, government, education and real estate.

In a prepared statement, José Lobón, senior vice president with CBRE Capital Markets, touted the building as one of the best-amenitized in the Brickell submarket. Brickell City Tower is close to numerous restaurants and bars and Brickell Metrorail station and is only one stop from the new downtown Miami Brightline station, which connects Miami’s CBD to downtown Fort Lauderdale and downtown West Palm Beach via intercity express trains.

The building was completed in 1985 and had most recently been purchased for $70 million by Banyan Street Capital from Colony Capital in early 2013, according to information provided to Commercial Property Executive by Yardi Matrix.

Lobón and Vice Chairman Christian Lee oversaw the transaction on behalf of the seller. The CBRE Capital Markets team also included First Vice President Amy Julian, of CBRE’s Debt & Structured Finance, and Senior Financial Analyst Marcos Minaya.

Absorption races against deliveries 

Year-over-year, overall office space vacancy in Miami-Dade edged up by 20 basis points to 12.4 percent, despite positive net absorption, because of the delivery of 658,000 square feet of new space, according to a second-quarter report from Cushman & Wakefield.

Specifically in the CBD, vacancy hit 16.9 percent, driven by “several new buildings delivering in the first half and some tenant move outs in Class A assets,” the report stated.

In June, a joint venture of KKR and Parkway Property bought 1111 Brickell Ave., a 30-story, 522,000-square foot office tower that’s also known as Sabadell Financial Center. The new owners reportedly intended to undertake a major renovation of the property, which is part of a mixed-use development that also includes a JW Marriott hotel.

Image courtesy of Banyan Street Capital