by Michele Newbern Gillis
Staff Writer
A lack of parking has led the local real estate association to forget their plan to renovate their current building and instead buy a new one.
The Northeast Florida Association of Realtors is in the process of purchasing a 53,000 square foot building in Baymeadows for $5.5 million. At the same time, the association has received an offer on its 10,000 square foot building near the Avenues Mall and hopes to sell it for $2.5 million to $3 million soon.
“This is a good step for the association,” said NEFAR CEO Glenn East. “It will give us better parking than where we are, it’s still close to where we are now and it will give us an income stream that we don’t have. It’s increasing the assets of the association at the same time and it’s a great investment.”
With the expansion of the membership and staff at NEFAR and the Multiple Listing Service, their current office outside Deercreek Country Club is at capacity. The original plan was to expand the current building, but East said that even if they did renovate and add on, they would not have adequate parking to match the additional space.
“When we were looking at the plans, we realized we could only get 25-30 more parking spaces with the renovation,” said East. “If we added 8,000 or 9,000 square feet and could house up to 150 people in a class, we’d have a lot more people than we had parking for.”
NEFAR’s desire to have larger meeting rooms to hold larger classes to accommodate the growing membership were the driving forces behind the decision to build a new facility.
The space they are moving into used to house a campus of the University of Phoenix and the move should be complete by year’s end.
“It’s already set up with training classrooms inside,” said East. “All we have to do is remodel some to make it work for us.”
Fran Pepis of Colliers Dickinson, the listing agent on the new building, is co-brokering with Nicholson-Williams Commercial Realty on the deal.
The top floor of the new building and a quarter of the bottom floor is currently rented by tenants. NEFAR would move into the remaining balance of the building that adds up to about 19,000 square feet.
“The additional space will allow us to upsize or downsize as needed depending on what the economy and market does,” said East. “But, it also gives the association an income stream of about $300,000 to $500,000 to help offset some of our debt and help the association.”