With a presidential election looming and uncertainty about the future, 2024 was an interesting year for commercial real estate industry.
The year was peppered with news about major retailers — from Macy’s to Big Lots — shutting down stores but it also lacked what seemed the endless number of multifamily property sales posted in recent years.
That doesn’t mean retailers didn’t enter the market or that no apartment properties changed hands, of course. But those kinds of deals seemed to take a back seat in 2024.
If there was one surprise it was the boom in Lee County, where in just matter of weeks in October and November, Amazon paid $66.5 million for 143 acres and Martin Marietta paid $620 million for nearly 2,000 acres.
Some of 2024’s most interesting deals include:
Industrial dealing
In mid-March, a 41-acre business park in Fort Myers sold for $92.5 million. The buyer is a Pennsylvania real estate trust run by EQT Exeter. The property is the 454,200-square-foot CenterLinks Business Park on Oriole Road near Alico Road just off Interstate 75. LQ Commercial, the Fort Myers commercial real estate firm that represented the seller, said that at the time it was “the largest industrial sale ever recorded in Southwest Florida.” CoStar data backs up the claim in an email. The biggest deal in the region for an individual industrial property before that was the 2016 sale of the 907,237-square-foot Meridian distribution center in Sarasota, for $47.5 million. LQ’s Adam Palmer and Mike Doyle brokered the deal.
Office offload
A new Jersey real estate investment firm acquired NetPark Tampa Bay, a nearly 1 million-square-office park on the site of the former East Lake Square Mall, in July. The buyer, Saxum Real Estate Partners, paid $45 million for the property, according to Hillsborough County public records. The complex is at 5701 E. Hillsborough Ave. and until 1997 was the home of the mall, which opened in 1976. The two-story office park opened in 1999 and sits on a 98.71-acre site. CBRE represented the seller, Bluett Capital Realty.
No tell hotel
The Blackstone Group bought a popular Pinellas County resort in September. The global New York-based investment company picked up the Hyatt Regency Clearwater Beach Resort & Spa from Houston-based Westmont Hospitality Group. Pinellas Court records show it paid $137 million. Westmont bought the then-250 room hotel at 301 S. Gulfview Blvd. in 2016 for $110 million. (A 2018 renovation added 36 rooms to the hotel.) The brightly colored hotel sits on Clearwater Beach next to Pier 60.
Condo cash
A 10,887-square-foot condominium on Longboat Key sold in early October for $21.24 million — the highest price ever paid for a condo in Sarasota County and ranking among its top overall sales. The buyer was an LLC in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania. The unit is in the new The Residences at The St. Regis Longboat Key. The condominium itself is actually two units in the St. Regis — Armand 201 and Armand 202 — that was combined to create a six-bedroom, seven-full and two-half-bathroom waterfront apartment. The unit’s exterior includes 7,500 square feet of open space with an extended terrace and a personal glass-front plunge pool with an unobstructed view of the Gulf of Mexico. Michael Saunders & Co. brokered the sale.
Industrial sequel
The record for largest industrial sale in Southwest Florida only lasted a few months. In late October, a Chicago real estate investment firm bought Tri-County 75, a Fort Myers industrial park. According to Lee County records, the firm, Walton Capital, paid $155 million for the 818,000-square-foot park at Luckett Road and Interstate 75. The seller is a venture between Glenstar Logistics and Columnar Investments, which completed the project a year ago. The park sits on 72 acres and is made up of four warehouse buildings — the smallest is 76,210 square feet and the largest is 404,050 square feet. CBRE arranged the sale.
Hardware handoffs
A pair of Tampa Bay hardware store properties sold for big dollars this fall. The first was a Home Depot building on Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard in Clearwater. According to Pinellas property records a New York LLC bought the 114,225-square-foot store for $23 million in early October. The previous owner, also a New York company, paid $17.92 million for it in 2018. Then, in November, investors acquired a recently completed Lowe’s Home Improvements store in Pasco County for $14.3 million. The store is in Odessa at 2317 Gunn Highway. Lowe’s has a corporate backed 20-year ground lease on the property. The store is in the Trinity Lakes center Dunphy Development is building.
Supply side
In October, Martin Marietta, an international building supply company based in North Carolina, bought nearly 2,000 acres in Lee County. The company, according to county records, paid $620 million for the land in two separate transactions — one for $420 million and another for $200 million. In all, the sale was made up of 23 parcels on Alico Road near Corkscrew Road totaling 1,986.2 acres. Martin Marietta already operates a quarry on Alico Road.
Delivering dollars
Online retail giant Amazon bought 143-acres in Fort Myers in November, paying $66.5 million for the land. The company is planning to build a 650,000-square-foot robotics fulfilment center on the property at 10631 State Road 82 near The Forum. The company’s new center will be its third location in Lee County, but its first robotics fulfillment center. Amazon says the new center will bring more than 1,000 full and part time jobs with the project. Construction is expected to begin next year and be completed in mid-2027. Justin Thibaut of LSI Cos. brokered the deal.