Westshore office building lands refinancing loan
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Aug 30, 2024

A Westshore office building has secured a refinancing loan.

The owners of Westshore Center, a nine-story, 219,992-square-foot office building at 1715 N. Westshore Blvd., landed a $32.5 million loan from BMO, CBRE Group Inc. said. Amy Julian, senior vice president, and Andrew Chilgren, first vice president, represented the building's owners. America's Capital Partners and C-III Capital Partners have owned the building since 2019, when they purchased the property for $52.05 million.

The building is 85% leased, according to CBRE. It has 29,631 square feet remaining to be leased. The building is home to 25 tenants with 4.8 years of weighted average lease term. Tenants have committed to more than 150,000 square feet in the building since the Covid-19 pandemic made remote and hybrid work the norm for office-based employers.

Westshore Center's occupancy is in line with the surrounding Westshore business district, where the total inventory of office space is more than 13.3 million square feet, and the total vacancy rate was just over 17% at the end of the second quarter, according to CBRE. The average asking lease rate in the district was just over $34 at the end of the second quarter, CBRE's data shows.

The Westshore business district has evolved in recent years as multifamily developers move in and restaurants open there; however, the neighborhood is still dominated by suburban-style office buildings. Westshore, as a submarket, boasts the largest concentration of office space anywhere in Tampa Bay; by comparison, downtown Tampa's total office inventory is just under 7 million square feet.

And more is on the way: Midtown Tampa, which is within the boundaries of the Westshore business district, is building the only office tower under construction in Tampa. When complete, the 18-story Midtown East office tower will be around 400,000 square feet. A large chunk of that tower — 292,000 square feet — was presold as an office condominium to Tampa Electric Co. and Peoples Gas, which will move their joint headquarters there.