Gatsby FL president Babak Ebrahimzadeh and a rendering of 11200 RCA Center Drive in Palm Beach Gardens (LinkedIn/Babak Ebrahimzadeh, Gatsby FL, Getty Images)
The Florida arm of Gatsby Enterprises is taking over a proposed office and retail project in Palm Beach Gardens after paying $17.5 million for a development site.
Miami-based Gatsby FL, an affiliate of the New York-based real estate investment firm, bought a 7-acre site at 11200 RCA Center Drive from an entity managed by Palm Beach Gardens-based developer Daniel Catalfumo, records show.
Gatsby intends to move forward with Catalfumo’s city approved plan to build PGA Tower, a 200-square-foot Class A mixed-use building, according to a press release.
Chris Smith with CBRE and Darryl Kaplan with Darryl R. Kaplan Company represented the buyer. Smith is also leading a CBRE team that will handle leasing at PGA Tower, which is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2024, the release states. The project has not yet broken ground.
Catalfumo’s entity paid $5 million for the vacant lot in 2019. Two years later, the Palm Beach Gardens City Council approved PGA Tower, along with a separate 396-unit apartment building to be developed by The Richman Group on land acquired from Catalfumo next to the office and retail project, according to published reports. The two projects are part of master-planned development known as PGA Station.
Rising eight stories, PGA Tower will be mostly office space with 7,000 square feet of restaurants, retail and a fitness center for tenants, the release states. The building will also have an attached parking garage with 1,000 spaces.
In the past few years, Gatsby, led by principal Nader Shalom, and its partner Master Mind, led by Babak Ebrahimzadeh, have targeted trophy office assets in the South Florida market. Ebrahimzadeh is also Gatsby FL’s president, the release states.
In 2019, the joint venture paid $125.5 million for 800 Brickell, a Class A office tower in Miami’s Brickell Financial District. A year later, Gatsby and Master Mind acquired DiVosta Towers, a two-building complex, each with 11 stories of office space in Palm Beach Gardens. The partnership paid $80 million for DiVosta Towers.
Palm Beach County’s office market is booming from the influx of out-of-state hedge funds and financial services companies. The county’s overall office vacancy rate dropped to 12.6 percent in the second quarter, compared to 16.1 percent during the same period of last year, according to Cushman & Wakefield. Overall asking rents rose by 4.5 percent, year-over-year, to $42.67 a square foot.
Class A space in Palm Beach Gardens is doing exceptionally well, with asking rents jumping to $49.79 in the second quarter, compared to $40.35 during the same period of last year, according to Cushman & Wakefield.
