Jewish Federation buys West Palm offices for $10.7M

Mazel Tov!

After months of searching, the Jewish Federal of Palm Beach County has purchased an office building in West Palm Beach for $10.7 million, likely as a new headquarters.

County records show the nonprofit agency bought 1 Harvard Circle, an office building with 45,000 square feet that was constructed in the late 1980s.

Suffolk Construction was both the seller and a long-term tenant at the building, occupying about 16,000 square feet of space. The Realtors Association of the Palm Beaches also has its headquarters at the building. Suffolk is one of South Florida’s most prominent builders, heading contracts like the MiamiCentral transit station development as well as the Related Group’s CityPlace Doral mixed-use project.

The construction firm now plans to vacate its space and move its 40 local employees to a more central location in the county “in an effort to be closer to our clients and current projects,” Southeast President Jeffrey Gouveia, Jr., said in a statement.

The realtors association, meanwhile, is staying put. A spokesperson for the association told The Real Deal that its 12,387-square-foot lease is still in place.

The Jewish Federation has spent months searching for a replacement to its 33,000-square-foot headquarters in West Palm that it leased from Oxbridge Academy, according to the Palm Beach Post. It was set to move into an 80,000-square-foot former furniture store in Palm Beach Gardens, but walked away from the deal in December.

A request for comment to the federation was not immediately returned, as the staff was on a retreat all day Tuesday.