by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
The owners of the historic Greenleaf Building at the corner of Laura and Adams streets have enlisted the help of the world’s largest commercial real estate services firm to sell the 12-story building.
CB Richard Ellis (CBRE) senior associate Oliver Barakat is selling the building as office condominiums. Previously, the individual floors were being marketed and sold by Addison Commercial Real Estate. Recently, Orlando-based Taurus — which has offices all over the United States (Boston, Atlanta and Dallas, to name a few) and world (Toronto, Buenos Aires and Munich, among others) — opted to go with CBRE and change its sales strategy.
“We are selling the building as condominium units, and we started a couple of months ago,” said Jim Citrano, managing director of the local CBRE office. “We have an agreement for an extended period of time.”
Citrano said Taurus approached CBRE about taking over the sale of the building, which was occupied primarily by the law firm of Foley & Lardner until late 2005 when the firm relocated to Independent Square. Citrano said his company’s creative marketing should help with sales.
Barakat is the lead commercial sales agent for the building. The floors are anywhere from 4,000 to 10,000 square feet and range in price depending on the floor ($925,000 for the top floor and $750,000 for comparable space on the fifth floor). However, the ability to create even more space exists.
“You can combine floors two through five and create about 20,000 square feet,” said Barakat, who has spent most of the past two years marketing and selling vacant land all over Northeast Florida. “The average is about four people per 1,000 square feet. That size space would be ideal for a company with 80-100 people.”
Barakat said he will market the building and its floors on a mostly local basis.
“Office condominiums are targeted at local businesses,” he said. “A national company is not going to buy a condominium.”
Barakat said national companies tend to opt for leasable space because they may want to easily expand or move, but they don’t have the need or desire to own space and build equity. Local companies, however, may tend to prefer to own rather than rent. The amount that can be saved, he said, could be in the $300,000 to $400,000 range over the course of a 10-year lease.
To date, only one floor of the building has been sold. The law firm of Albertelli & Associates has purchased the ninth floor and, Barakat said, another law firm is interested in the eighth floor.
Barakat said he’d like to have 80 percent of the building sold by the end of next year. But, with the Blackstone Building on Bay Street still the only true office condominium Downtown, Barakat said the year will be interesting.
“The condominium trend is relatively new in Jacksonville,” he said. “It’s being renewed. It was big in the 1970s, but the jury is still out on whether this is a trend or a structural change.”