AEW Sells Coral Gables Office Asset to Crescent Real Estate

Crescent Real Estate bought the Ryder Colonnade office building in Coral Gables for $70.4 million, marking a 13 percent discount from its price over a decade ago.

Fort Worth, Texas-based Crescent bought the 11-story building at 169 Coral Way from AEW Capital Management, according to records. The buyer borrowed a $67.9 million loan from FS Credit Originator, in the care of Rialto Capital Management.

Completed in 1988, Ryder Colonnade spans 205,400 square feet, according to its website. It’s attached to the Hotel Colonnade Coral Gables, which wasn’t part of the sale.

The price amounts to $331 per square foot.

The tower was recently rechristened to include the “Ryder” name after Ryder System, a Miami-Dade County homegrown logistics giant, moved its headquarters there. Ryder was based previously in a northwest area of the county for roughly 20 years, and it moved to a smaller office, citing the remote work shift.

In 2013, an entity tied to Boston-based TA Associates Realty paid $81 million for the office building, property records show. In 2015, AEW Capital, also based in Boston, took over the entity, suggesting it purchased the entire ownership stake of the building, according to state corporate records.

Crescent, led by Chairman John Goff and CEO Conrad Suszynski, is a real estate investor, manager and developer with $4.4 billion of assets under management as of February, according to its website. (The firm is different from Miami-based Crescent Heights.)

The discounted sale comes amid higher interest rates, insurance and other costs such as materials.

Although the Federal Reserve cut the benchmark rate four times this year and last, it had imposed 11 aggressive interest rate increases in 2022 and 2023. This has made refinancing harder and also squeezed landlords with floating-rate debt, increasing their loan obligations.

South Florida’s office market prospered from an influx of out-of-state companies over the past five years, increasing rents to new records. Still, some landlords have felt the sting from higher rates and remote work, prompting them to sell their office buildings.

In other discounted deals, Orlando-based Foundry Commercial sold the six-story Sawgrass Lake Center building at 13450 West Sunrise Boulevard in Sunrise for $36.5 million in January, nearly $21 million less than its price seven years ago.

In May, Boston-based Rockpoint, Miami-based Tricera, Palm Beach-based NDT Development and Boston-based New England Development sold the 18-story One Clearlake tower at 250 South Australian Avenue in West Palm Beach for $45 million. It marked a nearly 26 percent discount from its price four years ago.