BOCA RATON, FL-When Nokia Siemens Networks exited Boca Raton earlier this year, the sudden departure added to the painful swelling in southern Palm Beach County office vacancies. Now, that space is becoming part of the shadow market in Boca Raton as Flagler Real Estate Services works to backfill the space.
Flagler announced two new office leases totaling 66,947 square feet at the former Siemens Building at 900 Broken Sound Parkway. The transactions, which involved the headquarters relocation of CSL Plasma, a collector of human plasma, and a new office site for web-based portal Education Connection, were brokered by Flagler Senior Managing Director Keith O’Donnell. The tenants were represented by Ingrid Kennemer of Coastal Commercial Group and Gregory Lawrence of The Commercial Department, respectively.
“About 18 months ago, we signed a new lease extension with Nokia Siemens in the former Siemens building,” O’Donnell tells GlobeSt.com. “They gave us back floors four and five, but renewed the other three floors. Then about six months later they made a decision to exit the building and pushed the space out for sublease.”
With the just-inked leases, CSL is taking up the fourth and fifth floors of the class A office building located in the Arvida Park of Commerce. O’Donnell negotiated on behalf of the property owner, a joint venture of Mainstreet Capital Partners and The Praedium Group to sign CSL Plasma to a 44,127-square-foot lease. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
“CSL is currently located next door,” Kennemer tells GlobeSt.com. “So even though there are many buildings with large blocks of vacant space available in the Boca Raton market the company liked this location for its 120 employees. The landlord priced the concessions aggressively. Obviously, it’s a tenant’s market.”
900 Broken Sound is a five-story, 116,000-square-foot office building that offers full building back-up generator. The property is convenient to major access roadways, offers immediate access to I-95. Although the building is 100% leased, the occupancy rests at about 65%.
“Here’s the irony,” O’Donnell says. “Siemens built this building for themselves and then occupied it—so it’s never been available on the market until just now. Tenants have a choice of several other buildings, but this building is seeing strong acceptance in a tough market. When you add it up, in two years we’ve leased almost more space than the building offers because of the unusual nature of these deals.”
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