CP Group Managing Partner Angelo Bianco, DRA Advisors President and CEO David Luski and Miami Tower at 100 Southeast Second Street (CPGCRE, DRA Advisors, Google Maps)
CP Group and DRA Advisors have teamed up to buy Miami Tower, a landmark downtown office skyscraper known for its color-changing LED exterior, for $60 million less than its owner paid six years ago in a bet that the recent rush of major employers to South Florida will continue.
A source close to the deal said the joint venture paid $163.5 million for the 47-story Class A tower at 100 Southeast Second Street.
Dominic Montazemi of Cushman & Wakefield represented seller Sumitomo Corporation of Americas, which received significantly less than the $220 million it spent to buy the property six years ago.
Miami Tower’s occupancy dropped to 65 percent last year when law firm Carlton Fields vacated 95,000 square feet and moved to 2 MiamiCentral at 700 Northwest First Avenue, also in downtown Miami. In a statement, CP Group said the partnership plans to immediately launch a repositioning campaign intended to up the tower’s value and meet the demands of the many large employers flocking to South Florida.
Designed by Pritzker-winning architect I.M. Pei, the 636,000-square-foot office building is an iconic property that’s lit up the Miami skyline since its 1987 completion. It was built as the home for defunct CenTrust Bank, a casualty of the savings and loan financial disaster and became insolvent just a few years after moving in. In 1991, the federal government sold the building for $44 million, which reports at the time indicated was less than a third of its construction cost.
The building contains 37 floors of office space, 10 floors for parking and an 11th-floor sky lobby and event space.
The deal comes almost exactly a year after CP Group and its partners, funds managed by Rialto Capital Management and Sabal Capital Partners, paid $225 million for One Biscayne Tower, a 38-story office tower also in downtown Miami.
The Boca Raton-based firm, led by Managing Partner Angelo Bianco, acquired more than five million square feet of office space throughout the Southeast and Southwestern U.S. last year, it said in a release.
More recently, CP Group bought Las Olas Square, a downtown Fort Lauderdale office building, for $144.5 million in partnership with a fund affiliated with Stephen Ross’ Related Companies.
DRA Advisors, a New York-based investment advisor led by CEO David Luski, has 82 million square feet of commercial real estate under its management, the release states. In December, DRA paid a record $320 million for Boca Raton Innovation Campus, a 1.7 million-square-foot office park in Boca Raton.
