Tampa Bay Times sells off flagship office building
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Apr 22, 2016

The Tampa Bay Times has sold off its flagship office building in downtown St. Petersburg.

A partnership of Denholz Associates and Convergent Capital Partners paid $19 million for the building, the Times announced in a news story Friday afternoon.

The group is planning to "put significant capital into renovating the building," Nik Sachdev, Convergent Capital managing partner, said Friday.

The building is about 60 percent occupied, Sachdev said. The partners will upgrade common areas in the building and help fund renovations as new tenants lease space.

"We're very comfortable with them as a tenant," Sachdev said of the Times. "That factor was important in our purchase of the building."

C1 (NYSE: BNK), which has its main office in 16,689 square feet of leased space on the first floor of the building, said in a November regulatory filing that it expects to stay in the building after its sale to Bank of the Ozarks is complete.

The Times is far from the only newspaper in the Tampa Bay region to monetize its real estate. The Tampa Tribune sold off its waterfront real estate in downtown Tampa for more than $17 million last summer.

The Times announced in January 2015 that the property was up for sale. At the time, real estate sources familiar with the deal said the newspaper was looking to get around $30 million or $125 per square foot.

The building hit the market about four months after the newspaper abandoned its naming rights deal with the Tampa Bay Lightning.

When the Times announced that the building had been put for sale, it said proceeds from that deal as well as "other pending transactions" would help pay off the $28 million loan it secured from Boston-based Crystal Financial LLC.

On Friday, the newspaper reported that the principal interest on that loan was $22.5 million as of November 2015. "We love the location," Sachdev said. "There's so much to be excited about in that area."

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