Owner of Boca Raton Innovation Campus prepares mixed

May 16, 2023

The owners of the Boca Raton Innovation Campus, the largest office complex in South Florida, are working on plans for a mixed-use project, but the goal is to enhance the office space, not replace it.

Located on 123 acres at 5000 T-Rex Ave., BRIC spans 1.7 million square feet of offices that previously housed IBM. It's the campus where IBM engineers invented the personal computer.

Now, the technology industry has upended the office market nationwide as more companies permit remote work. South Florida's office market has weathered that trend better than most because more companies have relocated to this region, but the owners of BRIC have been focused on adding amenities to the office complex to make it a more attractive place to work, in person.

Boca Raton-based CP Group acquired BRIC in 2018 with several partners, and in 2021 CP Group brought in several new partners. The ownership group also includes Rialto, DRA Advisors and Las Olas Capital Advisors.

Angelo Bianco, managing partner of CP Group, said he has a pending application with Boca Raton to rezone the property to allow a mixed-use development to rise in the parking lots surrounding the offices. Plans call for 1,250 residential units, 125,000 square feet of retail, restaurants, grocery and entertainment, a 150- to 175-room hotel, and several parking garages. That would include a 4,000-seat live entertainment venue.

BRIC is already building a 1,100-space garage with a covered top deck so its tenants can park in the shade.

Bianco said BRIC is ideal for a mixed-use project because it's near two Interstate 95 exits and the Tri-Rail station. Part of the plan would be creating news streetscapes so the property is more pedestrian friendly. He envisions people walking between the Tri-Rail station, apartments and the offices on streets lined with shops and restaurants.

"We’re not just an office building in the middle of nowhere, we’re a live, work and play community," Bianco said.

He expects the City Council to vote on the new transit-oriented development zoning in July.

Not only would the mixed-use project create new value for the owners of BRIC, it could help attract new tenants to the office complex. Bianco said BRIC is 92% occupied, however, his company inherited lots of leases at relatively low rates with companies such as call centers that likely won't be there long-term. New leases at BRIC are in the upper $30s per square foot and many of those call center-type tenants aren't willing to pay that. Bianco expects one-third of the rent roll to turn over in the coming years.

Determined to attract new tenants willing to pay higher rents, Bianco said his goal is to make BRIC the most highly amenitized multi-tenant office building in the U.S.

The property owners have already spent millions of dollars on improvements. They added outdoor courtyards with benches and shade trees, a wooden deck facing the lake, a coffee chop, a café, a large fitness center with showers, drying cleaning drop-off lockers, a daycare center, and a conference center. They’re working on additional improvements, including more glass windows and skylights to bring sunlight into the building. They’re also looking for a health care provider to operate a clinic on site.

Another part of BRIC is being converted into a 7,000-square-foot food hall and a 13,000-square-foot dining/presentation space. It's building out another space as a STEAM lab, featuring computer coding, a computer lab, podcasting studios and more.

BRIC has some long hallways, in including the longest continuous hallway in the western hemisphere at 907 feet. To break up the monotony of those hallways, CP Group welcomed a dozen art galleries to display work by local and student artists to decorate the walls.

In order to take advantage of companies that want to move in sooner, BRIC is building out speculative office suites that can be ready within days, said Paul Tanner, managing partner of Las Olas Capital.

"It's one thing to build an office but to take something that was left for dead and breathe new life into it is really something else," Bianco said.

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