Forum Buildings in West Palm Beach Sell for $22.5M
Forum Buildings in West Palm Beach Sell for .5M
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The Forum, a fixture of West Palm Beach, FL’s suburban office market for more than four decades, sold for $22.5 million, or about $121 per square foot, to a group tied to Triarch Capital Group LLC.
The 185,089-square-foot property at 1665-1675 Palm Beach Lakes Blvd. consists of two 10-story buildings and a four-story parking garage. The seller was a joint venture between Crimson Peak LLC and Panther Capital Management.
A third building was sold last February for $6.5 million to an entity headed by the Houston Astros, who will turn the property into a 160-room hotel for players and visitors. The World Series champions opened a spring training complex near the site last year.
The Forum is just east of Interstate 95, next to The Palm Beach Outlets and across from a convention center owned by the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The local office submarket has posted five consecutive years of positive net absorption, resulting in declining vacancies and rising rents, according to José Lobón of CBRE, which represented the seller.
“Combined with a lack of any new office construction underway in the submarket, the outlook is positive for further vacancy decline and market rent growth,” he said.
In the 1970s, The Forum buildings established the suburban office market in West Palm Beach, said Neil Merin, chairman of Merin Hunter Codman, which teamed with CBRE to represent the seller.
Struggling to fill all three buildings, CP Forum gambled by moving all the tenants from the westernmost building into the other two, Merin said. CP Forum wanted to attract a hotel to the vacant building and nearly gave up hope of doing so when the Astros agreed to buy it, according to Merin.
“It was smart luck,” he told CoStar News.
The Forum is benefiting from its proximity to the popular outlet mall and new multifamily and residential developments, said Jonathan Kingsley of Colliers International South Florida, which represented the buyer.
Kingsley said his client bought the complex at a price that allows it to update the common areas and capitalize on increased demand for “value space” that’s leading to higher rents.
“Panther saw this as a good time to exit, and Triarch recognized the opportunity to take advantage of an improving market,” Kingsley said..
Tenants include Payment Alliance International, Wyland & Tadros and International Hotel Group, according to CoStar data.
CBRE’s Christian Lee, Amy Julian, Marcos Minaya and Joseph Chick teamed with Lobón in negotiating the deal for CP Forum LLC.
Please see CoStar COMPS #4101812 for additional information on this transaction.
