Law Firm Signs for 80,000-SF in Neighboring Tower

ORLANDO-Downtown’s cutthroat office leasing arena showed its tentacles this week as locally based CNL Financial Group, one of the largest real estate organizations in Florida, closed the biggest leasing deal of the year to date.CNL was able to get Akerman Senterfitt, a 400-lawyer firm, to leave the 18-story, 258,321-sf Citrus Center at 255 S. Orange Ave. after 33 years as a tenant and take the top four floors of the planned 12-story, 275,000-sf CNL Center II when it is completed in December 2005, according to CNL founder, chairman and CEO James Seneff Jr. The 80,000-sf lease, at an estimated 15 years, has an aggregate rent value of about $27 million, Downtown brokers intimate with the deal tell GlobeSt.com. They base their estimate on a projected effective average rent, including annual escalators, of $23 per sf. CNL didn’t disclose terms of the deal. Akerman Senterfitt will be moving out of 86,000-sf quarters next year.Citrus Center is about 200 yards from the development site of CNL Center II and the five-year-old, 14-story, 350,000-sf CNL Center I, CNL’s world headquarters. Both buildings flank the bronze-domed City Hall structure on South Street. Akerman Senterfitt was Citrus Center’s anchor tenant when the building was constructed in 1971 under the name of CNA Tower for its owner, CNA Insurance Co. of Chicago. Seneff had been waiting for a major tenant to sign on before starting construction on CNL Center II. Ground-breaking is tentatively scheduled for early May. The estimated hard construction cost is expected to be at least $150 per sf, or a total $41 million, area construction industry estimators tell GlobeSt.com.Akerman Senterfitt made the move to accommodate its growth, according to Robert L. Mellen III, the firm’s managing shareholder. At Citrus Center, the law firm’s operations are spread over eight floors.Akerman Senterfitt’s planned move in 2005 brings a new challenge to the Orlando office of Advantis Commercial Real Estate Services/GVA which leases and manages Citrus Center for owner Parkway Properties Inc. of Jackson, MS. Parkway bought the property in February 2003 from privately held Tricony Florida Corp. of Palm Beach, FL for $32 million, or $123.87 per sf, the largest transaction of its kind in the past three years. At 98.6% occupancy, Citrus Center is one of the best-leased class A office buildings Downtown, area brokers tell GlobeSt.com.”Sublease space continues to negatively impact the office market, currently accounting for 17% of all space available,” says Advance Research director Lisa M. DeVore. “Absorption of this space will be key to the market’s recover.” At the beginning of 2004, Downtown’s office space inventory of 6.2 million sf showed an occupancy level of 89.5%.