Gaedeke offloads West Palm offices to investment manager for $68M

The Gaedeke Group just sold an office complex in West Palm Beach to a Connecticut investment manager for $68.24 million.

Included in the deal were three parcels: a low-rise parking garage at 517 North Olive Avenue, the 21-story office tower at 515 North Flagler Drive and its smaller four-story sister building next door.

The trio are connected by a pair of elevated glass-enclosed walkways, one of which crosses over North Olive Avenue between the garage and the main tower.

Dubbed Northbridge Center, the 1980’s-era plaza has been owned for the last 23 years by the Gaedeke Group of Dallas, Texas.

The plaza’s entryway and sky bridge

The real estate company paid $24 million for the properties in 1993, according to Palm Beach County property records. With a combined 293,000 square feet of leasable office space (and some ground-floor retail), that price equated to about $82 per square foot.

Now, through a deal that closed this week, Gaedeke has sold the entire plaza to an affiliate of Connecticut’s Greenfield Partners. The investment management company paid nearly $293 per square foot for the property — more than triple the price it fetched two decades ago.

A large portion of the purchase was financed with a $56.75 million loan from Mesa West Real Estate Income Fund III, according to county records. The debt fund was raised by Mesa West Capital, a New York-based real estate lender with about $3.5 billion worth of assets, according to its website.

Gaedeke made its mark on South Florida last year when it closed one of 2015’s biggest commercial deals: the $142 million purchase of Brickell’s Espirito Santo Plaza office complex in September.