In another big suburban office move, PHH Mortgage has signed a lease for more than 100,000 square feet of office space in the Deerwood area at 8800 Baymeadows Way W.
PHH Mortgage will move in the first quarter, said Victor Hughes, managing director for Parkway Realty Services. He represented the landlord, DRA Advisors LLC of New York, N.Y.
The company now leases the three-story, 150,000-square-foot PHH Mortgage building at 5201 Gate Parkway. Its lease expires in November 2016 and it has wanted to downsize its space.
PHH Corp. spokesman Dico Akseraylian said Tuesday morning the company is leaving the Gate Parkway building because it has unutilized space there.
About 450 employees are based in the Jacksonville office, he said.
Sources have said for months that Deutsche Bank has been completing plans to lease the PHH Mortgage building so it can accommodate the financial-services company’s Jacksonville growth. Deutsche Bank has not commented about that, but continued to state that “Jacksonville continues to be a critical component of our location footprint in the Americas.”
Hughes said Oliver Barakat, senior vice president of CBRE Inc., represented PHH Mortgage in the 8800 Baymeadows Way W. lease transaction.
Hughes said PHH Mortgage’s lease will backfill a large portion of space formerly used by the FDIC. The building is called 8800 Baymeadows Way West.
The five-story building comprises about 219,000 square feet of space. Hughes said PHH Mortgage will take about half of the first floor and the entire second and third floors.
Other tenants in the building include the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and Jacksonville-based AutoQuotes.
Hughes said a six-story parking garage sits next to the building, and owners are building a 752-space parking lot next to that. He said with the lot and the garage, owners can provide about eight spaces for every 1,000 square feet of office space, which can be attractive to tenants who need a lot of parking.
Hughes said the building has a cafeteria and has been renovated, with a new roof and elevators. “It’s basically like a new building,” he said.
In 2013, New Jersey-based PHH Mortgage cut a third of its Jacksonville workforce and notified the state it would lay off 365 positions. Akseraylian said it is hiring for some specialized roles. Open positions can be found at phhjobs.com.
PHH Mortgage is part of PHH Corp.
The move has been expected. A representative of the PHH Mortgage building’s owner said in January that PHH Mortgage was downsizing to 80,000-100,000 square feet of space and looking at options, including staying at its three-story Gate Parkway.
The PHH Mortgage move is among several large office moves to the Deerwood and Baymeadows area.
In recent weeks, Digital Risk LLC confirmed it will move from Gate Parkway and Southeastern Grocers LLC said it will relocate from Westside to the Prominence office park in Baymeadows.
Hughes said he is “extremely optimistic” about 8800 Baymeadows Way W. because of a full pipeline of additional users interested in the building.
Along with parking, he said the structure offers multiple power sources and redundant power.
It was built in 1993 for AT&T Universal Card Services Corp. and then sold to Citicorp Credit Services Inc., which used it until moving to its It was built in 1993 for AT&T Universal Card Services Corp. and then sold to Citicorp Credit Services Inc., which used it until building a Flagler Center campus. Citicorp sold it to DRA Advisors.
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