Downtown Tampa office tower sold for $20 million
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Apr 21, 2021

A Tampa-based real estate investment group has acquired a 12-story office tower in the heart of its hometown.

TLR Group said Wednesday that it paid $20.06 million for the 61,260-square-foot GTE Tower at 601 N Ashley Drive. The seller, Ashley-601 Inc., paid $4.1 million in the depths of the Great Recession in late 2009.

It is TLR's 12th acquisition in the Tampa area.

The tower was 89 percent occupied as of early March, according to data from CoStar Group Inc.

“This acquisition is a milestone for TLR Group and plays a large role in the bigger plans of the company that started in 2015," TLR President Rudy Nassri said in a statement. "We want to invest in all types of real estate sectors in Tampa Bay, and this is the first office building acquisition."

The novel coronavirus pandemic, which forced most office-based employers to transition to a remote work model, has left a cloud of uncertainty over the future of office real estate — but there are promising signs of a recovery, particularly in the Tampa Bay market. Pfizer Inc. recently signed a massive office deal in The Heights, and brokers and landlords say they've seen an increase in activity since the first of the year.