Knights Point on Harbour Island lands large office tenant
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Nov 4, 2014

Knights Point, the commercial waterfront complex on Harbour Island, has landed a new office tenant.

Total Quality Logistics, a non-asset based freight brokerage firm, has signed a lease for 36,000 square feet at Knights Point. The deal is a homecoming of sorts for Cincinnati-based TQL, which had an office at Two Harbour Place until 2012. The company moved from Harbour Island to Woodland Corporate Park, where it occupies 18,000 square feet.

K.C. Tenukas, a senior vice president with Cassidy Turley in Tampa, and Santosh Govindaraju, CEO of Convergent Capital Partners, confirmed the deal to the Tampa Bay Business Journal on Tuesday. Tenukas represented TQL in the lease transaction; Convergent owns Knights Point.

Office space is an anchor of downtown Tampa. Increasing the office base and daytime population of the urban core is essential to ongoing revitalization efforts. At 36,000 square feet, the TQL deal is sizable for Tampa, where most office leases are less than 20,000 square feet. Many of the employees live within walking distance of the Harbour Island location, Govindaraju said. He said TQL plans to bring 150 employees to the office.

"We think this is exciting for downtown and the continued trend to live-work-play in walkable office and residential environments," he said, "and that's kind of the bet we've been making with downtown Tampa and downtown St. Pete."

Convergent acquired Knights Point in early September, at the same time Blackstone Group acquired the adjacent Westin Tampa Harbour Island. Tampa-based Convergent has said it plans to work with Blackstone to renovate both properties and their shared exterior areas. By leasing up the office space, Govindaraju said, Convergent is creating a customer base for the retailers and restaurants it's courting to occupy the first story of the complex.

Once TQL takes occupancy, Convergent will have 9,000 square feet of office space vacancy and thinks it will lease that by the time TQL moves in spring 2015. There's 35,000 square feet of empty retail space on the first floor, for which Convergent is courting primarily restaurants.

"I think people want to come to this location on the water as a gathering point," Govindaraju said.

The live-work-play dynamic was key to the deal for TQL, Tenukas said.

"We completed a thorough evaluation of TQL's office space needs, taking into consideration their goals and objectives as a young growing company to compete and retain top talent in their industry," Tenukas said. "The determination was then made to focus specifically on locations throughout Tampa's [central business district] that could, No. 1, accommodate their need from a square footage stand point and No. 2, fit into the model of a live/work/play environment."

TQL functions as a transportation division for companies who outsource that work, spokeswoman Kristine Glenn said Tuesday.

"We are growing faster than we ever have in our history, in many offices all across the country," Glenn said. "Companies are really looking to streamline their operations."

Ashley Gurbal Kritzer is a reporter for the Tampa Bay Business Journal.