Hines pays $57M for office building dev site in Fort Lauderdale’s FATVillage

Hines bought the development site for its office project in Fort Lauderdale’s FATVillage for $57.4 million.

Hines bought roughly 15 lots on the west side of North Andrews Avenue between Fifth and Sixth streets from an affiliate of Fort Lauderdale-based Urban Street Development, led by Alan Hooper and Tim Petrillo, according to records.

The properties are 501, 511-515, 535, 545 North Andrews Avenue; 500-508, 510, 512, 516, 528, 530 and 548 Northwest First Avenue; 10 Northwest Sixth Street and three parking lots dispersed between the buildings. The lots are mostly occupied with low-rise industrial and commercial buildings.

Houston-based Hines earlier this year announced plans to build a seven-story, 180,000-square-foot building. It is planned as part of Hooper’s envisioned FATVillage mixed-use project that will span 5.6 acres and 835,000 square feet of office, retail and residences, according to an April news release from Hines.

Urban Street Development is a joint venture partner on the project with Houston-based Hines, led by Jeffrey Hines.

Hooper, who has been assembling the site for years, bought the holdout piece at 516 Northwest First Avenue in 2020 for $5.5 million.

The entire project is part of the bigger FATVillage district. The acronym is for Flagler Arts Technology. The once rundown area with mostly industrial and other low-rise commercial buildings now is seeing a rebirth similar to Miami’s Wynwood. Both districts have morphed into well-known art and retail hubs.

Property owners Doug McCraw and Lutz Hofbauer jumpstarted FATVillage, which runs from Andrews Avenue west to the train tracks and between Fourth and Sixth streets, according to the FATVillage website.

Hines’ office tower will include common areas for collaboration and conferences, a rooftop deck, private tenant balconies, a gym and bike storage, according to the release. It is designed with an eye toward future tenant demands in a post-Covid world, such as good indoor air filtration. Also, it relies on technology to minimize physical touching of, for example, door handles and elevator buttons.

As part of Hines’ Timber, Transit and Technology, or T3, brand, the building will be constructed from heavy timber. The transit part comes into play in the district’s proximity to the Brightline train station in downtown Fort Lauderdale. The passenger train is to resume service in November after halting early on in the pandemic.