Tampa businessman bids on Rivergate Tower in downtown Tampa
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Apr 16, 2015

Motivated as much by passion as potential profits, a Tampa entrepreneur is bidding on the city's most iconic skyscraper. Tom Frederick, who was a partner in Zeno Office Solutions before selling the company to Xerox in 2013, said Thursday that he submitted a $60 million offer for the Rivergate Tower, the 31-story cylindrical office tower on North Ashley Drive.

Offers were due Tuesday, Frederick said. He wasn't sure when CBRE Group Inc., which took the property to market earlier this year, plans to select a buyer. A CBRE spokesman declined comment.

As an individual, Frederick is an unusual prospective buyer for an office tower. Most buyers and sellers of properties like Rivergate Tower are large investment firms. Frederick said he has some experience with commercial real estate, including a portfolio of smaller properties, but has never pursued a building of this scale before.

Frederick said he's enthused by the downtown revitalization movement and sees "tremendous upside potential" in the building, pointing to another group's success with the nearby Wells Fargo Center.

"I always thought it was a cool building," Frederick said. "That building's always had the reputation of being on the wrong side of the tracks because it was on the wrong side of Kennedy, and the Riverwalk, I think, is going to change that."

The 515,965-square-foot tower, which is 77 percent occupied, sold in late 2014 as part of a 19-property portfolio. It's common in commercial real estate for the new owner to spin off certain properties after buying a large portfolio.

The tower's $59.6 million sale price recorded in county property records reflected an allocation within the portfolio, making it difficult to gauge what it would have sold for individually.

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