Tony Puente of Fairchild Partners and Miami Tower

Tony Puente landed at Miami Tower at the worst of times. When he took the assignment as leasing manager for the iconic downtown skyscraper two years ago, Bank of America had already decided to consolidate its space and leave the tower. Puente faced 50,000 square feet of empty office space.

The Miami office market has only worsened since then.

The vacancy rate in January hit 15 percent in Miami-Dade County, the highest level since 2004. And the worst may not be over yet. Two mega office towers — 1450 Brickell and Met 2 Financial Center — come online this year and Brickell Financial Center could open in 2011.

“With rental rates being what they are, a lot of tenants that go into a new building can occupy less space and there are associated cost-savings with that,” said Danet Linares, executive vice president at Miami-based Blanca Commercial Real Estate and leasing agent for 1450 Brickell. Puente, senior vice president at Fairchild Partners in Coral Gables, has his work cut out for him. [more]

The bleak outlook for Miami’s commercial real estate market is not confined to the downtown core. Even in the formerly robust Airport West submarket, marquee projects like One Park Doral are flagging.

One Park Doral, which opened October 2009, is Miami’s newest Class A office building. The project is the first phase of Park Square at Doral, a 51-acre mixed-use development with office, retail, hotel and multi-family residential properties. As 2010 progresses, its only tenants are its developer, Shoma Group along with Alcora Group and Visit Us, which signed a lease earlier this month.

Blanca Commercial Real Estate took on the task of filling the building in a down market. It’s one that offers landlords far fewer prospects, as businesses fail or stay put in a weak economy, providing prospective tenants with ample negotiating power. [more]

After losing its anchor tenant, the Bank of America Tower at International Place Miami has a new name, which its owners hope won’t be in place very long.
Fairchild Partners, the management team for newly christened Miami Tower, is actively negotiating to find a new tenant that could assume the lucrative naming rights, after Bank of America’s departure, but the current climate may yield few results.
Management for Miami Tower — acclaimed for its changing palette of exterior lighting schemes — will give the first tenant to sign a lease for at least 80,000 square feet the naming rights at no additional cost. Miami Tower can offer up to 76,000 square feet of contiguous space per floor. [more]

The former Bank of America Tower at International Place, an icon of the downtown Miami skyline, needs a new corporate naming rights purchaser to maximize the 600,000-square-foot, 47-story building’s earning potential. Fairchild Partners, the leasing and marketing agency for the I.M. Pei-designed skyscraper, is seeking a new partnership for the naming rights, a deal that would be worth millions of dollars. Tony Puente, senior vice president with Coral Gables-based Fairchild, said the tower has been a fixture in the city since it opened, and remains a feature in the promotional credits for the television show CSI Miami. He said tenants like the idea that they can locate their business in the heart of the city, a factor that helped in 62,000 square feet of leasing in 2009, including a 34,536-square-foot renewal by UBS Financial Services valued at $7.5 million over its five-year term.
[GlobeSt]

UBS Financial Services has renewed its $7.5 million, five-year lease for 34,536 square feet at Miami’s Bank of America Tower. The renewal is the tower’s sixth so far in 2009 and the largest of the year. Tony Puente, senior vice president of Fairchild Partners, represented the landlord, Wealth Capital Management. Colleen B. Newcomer, president of CBN Commercial Real Estate Services, represented UBS Financial Services. Bank of America Tower is now 92 percent occupied. TRD [more]