Fort Lauderdale developer pays $24M for site of riverside apartments

Plans call for a 25-story luxury rental tower with about 12,500 sf of retail

Renderings of 4 West Las Olas
Renderings of 4 West Las Olas

A Fort Lauderdale development firm just paid $24 million for the site of a luxury rental tower, property records show.

Elevate Partners affiliate Elevate One River LLC bought the roughly 1-acre property at 305 South Andrews Avenue from One River Plaza Co., an Ohio partnership. Elevate, led by founding partners Thomas Vogel and Scott Bodenweber and Denny St. Romain, plans to build a 25-story, 261-unit riverfront luxury apartment building on the site, according to its website. The company financed the sale with a $6 million mortgage from Trez Capital, based in Vancouver.

Vogel, whose background is in banking, is also president of KRV Company, a real estate management firm based in Fort Lauderdale. Bodenweber previously worked for Hudson Capital Group, a private family office, and St. Romain is currently managing direct of JLL’s capital markets practice in the state. St. Romain could not be reached for comment.

Plans call for 237,278 square feet of rentable space with studios, one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments and about 12,500 square feet of retail space. Included in that is 6,000 square feet of ground floor retail space for a restaurant, bar or store, according to the developer’s website.

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The project, called 4 West Las Olas, is expected to be delivered in about two years.

Records show the seller is led by Jerome W. Vogel and Susan L. Vogel. A nearly 216,000-square-foot office building currently sits on the 1.08-acre lot near the Las Olas Riverfront.

Development is ramping up along the river. New York-based Property Markets Group closed on a $154 million construction loan for the redevelopment of the Las Olas Riverfront in July. PMG plans to build two apartment towers with 1,200 units on the riverfront site. The developer is expected to break ground on the first phase this fall with a delivery date of 2020.

A group of investors also just paid $5.75 million for the riverfront property at 400 and 408 South Andrews Avenue. Azorra Properties sold the site for $244 per square foot for the building and $261 per square foot for the land.