Greenfield Buys 390 KSF Office Tower in Downtown Tampa

By Keith Loria, Contributing Editor

Greenfield Partners has acquired Wells Fargo Center, a Class A, 389,608-square-foot landmark office building in Tampa, Fla., from a joint venture between Feldman Equities and Goldman Sachs, for a reported $78 million.

CBRE represented the seller in the transaction.

“Given the tightening vacancy rates in Tampa, market rents are expected to surge upward in the very near term,” Christian Lee, CBRE’s vice chairman, told Commercial Property Executive. “Wells Fargo Center is one of the top-tier buildings in the market and is perfectly suited to benefit by that.”

It was only two years ago when the joint venture purchased the property for $55 million. Over the past 24 months, it spent nearly $6 million on building upgrades and increased its occupancy from 75 percent to 93 percent.

“Wells Fargo Center is one of only four Class A trophy properties located in Tampa’s Central Business District. It is a landmark property that has benefitted from institutional ownership for most of its history,” Lee added. “The LEED Gold-certified property has a unique ‘sawtooth’ design and an impressive roster of tenants that includes multinational credit tenants such as Wells Fargo, UBS and USAA.”

Located at 100 South Ashley Dr. and originally constructed in 1985, Wells Fargo Center towers 22 stories with an exterior façade highlighted by rose-colored concrete panels and insulated solar bronze finish curtain wall set in aluminum frames. The property’s amenity base includes a state-of-the-art fitness facility, upscale café, full-service branch bank, ATM, a new conference center and complimentary shuttle service. Additionally, parking is available in a nine-story connected parking garage containing 515 spaces.

According to Lee, nationally there is strong investor appetite for quality office product in core, downtown urban locations, and Tampa has a lot of “upside” characteristics that investors are seeking.

“Job growth has led to an uptick in office leasing activity—in Q3 2014 Tampa hit a three-year high for renewals and expansions,” Lee said. “And while rents have been rising steadily since 2012, they are still quite affordable relative to other cities, even for some of the highest-quality office product in the state. This is why CBRE was able to exceed both market and client expectations and achieve $200 per square foot pricing in this sale.” 

Feldman Equities and Tower Realty Partners will continue to manage the property.

The CBRE Capital Markets, Institutional Properties team representing the seller included Lee, Dale Peterson, Charles Foschini and Marcos Minaya.