Franklin Street brokers the sale of Floriland Office Center in Tampa
TAMPA, Florida — Franklin Street, a full-service commercial real estate firm serving institutional and private clients nationwide, announced it has brokered the sale of Floriland Office Center, located at 9309 N. Florida Ave, Tampa, FL. The 160,000-square-foot property, built in 1972, was purchased by Tampa Bay Christian Academy to accommodate the relocation of its campus. Franklin Street represented the buyer in the transaction, with FL 9-14 Fund LLC, a Delaware-domiciled limited liability company registered to do business in Florida, as the seller.
“Helping Tampa Bay Christian Academy identify a new site for its growing community presented a set of unique challenges over a two-year process,” Pat Kelly, regional managing director, Franklin Street, said. “The Floriland Office Center, a former mall converted to non-profit office and retail space, was the needle in the haystack our client was looking for as it fits TBCA’s space needs to accommodate growth and provide traditional school amenities to its students. Infill sites like this in the urban core are rare and don’t often become available.”
TBCA required a location with room for 600 students and the ability to provide traditional school amenities like a cafeteria, outdoor recreation space, offices, classrooms, and more. Because TBCA operates as a non-profit funded substantially by the State of Florida, with no tuition paid out of pocket by families, the acquisition required tax-exempt bond financing rather than a conventional commercial purchase. The surrounding demographics and non-profit tenants, including Franklin Street client Ultimate Medical Academy, a nursing school, helped build a compelling story to lending bond holders.
“This transaction is representative of two converging trends in Tampa’s commercial real estate landscape,” Anthony Suarez, associate director, Franklin Street, said. “Adaptive reuse of aging retail and office assets for educational and institutional purposes and the increasing difficulty of finding large-scale infill sites in the urban core both prevalent within the region. Floriland Center’s evolution illustrates how older commercial buildings can be repositioned to meet needs that new construction on the suburban fringe often cannot replicate.”
With this acquisition, TBCA has positioned itself as one of the largest Christian schools in the Tampa Bay region with ample room to increase enrollment well beyond its current 600 students. Its location, with direct access to Interstate 275 and East Busch Boulevard, places the school within reach of families across Northwest Tampa.
Kelly and Suarez represented the seller in this transaction, and Franklin Street Property Management has been retained to manage the facility on behalf of TBCA.
###
About Franklin Street
Franklin Street is a privately held, full-service commercial real estate services firm headquartered in Tampa, Florida. The firm provides tailored solutions nationwide, serving owners and occupiers through Capital Markets, Insurance Services, Leasing, and Management. Founded in 2006, Franklin Street has a network of industry-leading brokers and capital partners across the country to ensure exceptional client service. Learn more about Franklin Street.