Boca bank tower trades for nearly $36M

A New York investment company just sold the Bank of America Tower in Boca Raton to a public trust for $35.75 million.

The eight-story building is located at 150 East Palmetto Park Road in downtown Boca Raton.

It was sold by Clarion Partners, an investment manager based in New York that has roughly $38 billion in assets under its control.

The buyer is Dividend Capital Diversified Property Fund, a public real estate investment trust that has an office in Denver, Colorado. It primarily invests in commercial assets and has a portfolio of 59 properties, totaling roughly 9.8 million square feet.

Clarion first purchased Bank of America Tower for $34.2 million in 2005 on behalf of a “separately managed account,” according to a news release about the sale. That price breaks down to about $312 per square foot for the 109,553-square-foot tower. It’s mostly made up of office space but also has ground floor retail and restaurant suites.

The building, which has a full-service Bank of America branch on the bottom floor, is 87 percent leased to tenants like Zen Offices, Veretech Holdings and Charles Schwab & Company. An eatery called Besito Boca will also soon open in the restaurant space.

After owning it for a decade, Clarion sold it for about $326 per square foot. That’s a $1.55 million return over what it cost the firm to buy Bank of America Tower 10 years ago.

The investment manager was also behind a massive $117 million retail purchase in Palm Beach that closed Monday. — Sean Stewart-Muniz