As TECO's HQ breaks ground, Midtown Tampa developer talks office success
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Jan 12, 2023

The pitch for office space at Midtown Tampa includes a lot of the technical aspects corporate users want these days: The buildings are energy efficient, sustainably built and have column-free floors so tenants can maximize their space.

But Nick Haines, CEO of Midtown master developer Bromley Cos., suspects that Midtown's shops, restaurants and hotel are also top of mind for the executives who decide to lease office space there.

"Equally important for most users is what's outside the four walls of the office building," Haines told the Tampa Bay Business Journal. "It's the whole experience — they can go shopping at Whole Foods, celebrate at Ponte, use the hotel rooms."

On Thursday morning, Haines and his partners at Highwoods Properties will break ground on their second joint venture within Midtown: Midtown East, an 18-story office tower twice as tall as their first, Midtown West. Unlike Midtown West, Midtown East is breaking ground with an anchor tenant in place: Tampa Electric Co. and Peoples Gas will have purchased 11 commercial condominiums in the tower, where the utilities will have a combined head count of 900 people.

Office space has been part of nearly every iteration of Midtown, which began life as Tampa Bay One in the early aughts. Vertical construction on Midtown began in May 2019. The speculative office space in Midtown West was challenged by the overnight shift to remote work for office jobs that the pandemic caused in March 2020 — and still managed to land some big corporate names.

Kforce Inc. has its "office occasional" headquarters in Midtown West. Primo Water moved its headquarters there. SouthState Bank leases space and bought signage rights on the building. SouthState was one of the first companies to commit to Midtown in the depths of the pandemic. Commercial real estate brokerage Savills has moved its office there, too.

Midtown West is now almost fully leased; in the coming weeks, Midtown's boutique office space, The Loft at Midtown, will be 100% leased, Haines said. He expects the companies who lease the remaining 134,000 square feet in Midtown West to be mostly full-floor users; the building's floor plates are 26,000 square feet.

TECO's headquarters goes beyond Midtown's street-level experience and efficient office space: It also has hurricane-resistant construction and sits 30 feet above sea level — critical factors for a utility company in storm-prone Florida.

Haines said discussions with TECO began about a year ago. TECO confirmed its headquarters move from downtown Tampa in December.

"To land one of Tampa's largest homegrown tenants who's been in downtown Tampa for many years would be the envy of any office landlord," he said. "This is a real statement about what Midtown's become."