Crocker Partners, Rialto pay $179M for Boca Raton Innovation Campus

Crocker Partners and Rialto Capital Management just paid $179.3 million for the Boca Raton Innovation Campus, in the biggest office sale in the tri-county region since 2016.

The joint venture purchased IBM’s former sprawling tech office complex at 4800-5002 T-Rex Avenue from Farallon Capital Management and Next Tier HD, according to Real Capital Analytics. Eastdil Secured brokered the deal.

The 1.68-million-square-foot office park sits on 123 acres in Boca Raton near I-95. It was developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s by IBM as its North American Research and Development facility. IBM closed it in 1996.

Boca Raton Innovation Campus is about 71 percent occupied to tenants that include Bluegreen Corp., Tyco Integrated Security, TransUnion, and Modernizing Medicine, according to RCA.

Portions of the office campus could be redeveloped. The Palm Beach Post reported last year that Farallon and Next Tier were working with the city of Boca Raton to rezone parts of the property to allow for 720 apartments, 20 townhomes, a 120-room hotel and 81,000 square feet of retail space. A number of office parks in South Florida are being redeveloped to include apartments, retail and hotels, like the Park at Broken Sound in Boca Raton.

The property last sold for $128.7 million in 2015, according to RCA.

In 2017, the largest office sale was Rockpoint Group’s $155 million purchase of 1221 Brickell in Miami.

Boca Raton-based Crocker Partners owns 24 properties with an estimate value of $2.1 billion. The majority of the investment firm’s portfolio is in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties. Rialto is owned by Lennar Corp.

The Boca Raton Innovation Campus deal is the first partnership for Crocker Partners and Rialto, according to RCA.