Banking behemoth close to deal for 1M square feet of office space in Tampa, sources say
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Jan 28, 2016

A banking and financial services firm that already has a large presence in Hillsborough County is close to making a deal for major expansion.

Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) is in advanced stages of negotiations with multiple developers for an office campus that will be around 1 million square feet, according to sources with knowledge of the deal, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the situation. A deal could close in the coming weeks, sources say.

"We are always evaluating opportunities to ensure our real estate footprint reflects the needs of our business," Kamran Mumtaz, a Citigroup spokesman, said in a statement.

Citigroup occupies about 670,000 square feet in Sabal Park, an office park in East Tampa. The company recently signed a three-year lease for close to 75,000 square feet in Hidden River Corporate Park.

A three-year deal is a temporary solution to space needs, and represents the amount of time a company would need to design and build a new corporate campus. Most office leases are commitments of at least five years, and often for 10 or 15 years.

In early 2015, Hillsborough County approved a $3.4 million incentive package for Citigroup, which at that time was planning to add nearly 1,200 jobs on its current campus. A source said the new office development would likely accommodate job growth beyond what was proposed in the incentive package.

One of the sites in the running, sources said, is Strategic Property Partners' district in downtown Tampa. SPP, which is controlled by Tampa Bay Lightning owner Jeff Vinik and Cascade Investment LLC, is on the hunt for a major office tenant to anchor its district.

A spokeswoman for SPP declined comment Thursday.

Vinik has said multiple times that the group is getting closer to landing an office deal. In September 2015, he told the Tampa Tiger Bay Club that SPP was "having discussions with several major prospects," but cautioned that the deal may be with a company that provides support services to a major corporation.

It might be a company, Vinik said at the time, that brings "thousands of high-paying jobs related to Fortune 500 companies."

"Let's not turn away 2,000 jobs because it happens to be a regional headquarters, not a corporate headquarters," he said.

If a deal comes to fruition, it will be a major victory for the developer, wherever it lands. There's been close to zero office construction in the area in the last five years, other than a small speculative development in the Citrus Park area and Laser Spine's new 176,000-square-foot campus, which is under construction.

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