The Florida Hospital Association has sold more than two downtown acres to an Orlando investment company.
Elevation Financial Group bought the eight parcels comprised of 2.12 acres, which includes the Tallahassee-based association’s former Orlando offices adjacent to Park Lake. The FHA had closed that office last November as it centralized all operations in Tallahassee.
The land sold for $4 million on Sept. 12 to an entity connected to Elevation, per Orange County documents. Cushman & Wakefield’s Glen Jaffee and Jeff Sweeney represented the association in the sale, and a representative for Elevation was not immediately known.
In total, the property has more than 20,000 square feet across multiple buildings, according to the county property appraiser. Elevation would renovate the existing main 10,000-square-foot office building and demolish other buildings on the property to make way for new development, according to the company in a release.
Elevation Commercial Development, a subsidiary of Elevation Financial Group, will oversee the construction and demolition.
“We see an incredible opportunity to take an underutilized and distressed property and bring it back to life through strategic demolition, renovation and ground-up construction,” Matthew Downs, president of Elevation Commercial Development, said in a prepared statement. “What now is a mashup of disconnected buildings will be transformed into a reimagined property featuring multiple new office options for Orlando businesses.”
Ben Friedman, director of public affairs for Elevation Financial Group, told Orlando Business Journal the property likely will include office development, the scale of which is to be determined.
Meanwhile, Elevation Financial Group is preparing to build a new three-story, 14,000-square-foot corporate headquarters on New York Avenue in Winter Park. Elevation Commercial Development is also working on that office.
The group of properties is relatively unique to the downtown area because of the location and the size of the portfolio, Jeré Matheny, senior associate at Orlando-based real estate firm First Capital Property Group Inc. who is not involved with the deal, previously told OBJ.
The property and the zoning could lend itself to residential, medical office or a combination of uses in the long term.
Matheny has seen demand continue to recover for office space in downtown and other submarkets, partly thanks to continued population growth. “We don’t see any slowing down.”
Meanwhile, the Central Business District has an office vacancy rate of 14.2% for second-quarter 2022, according to Cushman & Wakefield. That’s slightly up from 13.5% during the prior quarter.
The asking price for all classes of office downtown is $28.97 per square foot for the second quarter. That is slightly down from $29.06 per square foot in the first quarter.
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