Downtown Tampa student housing tower The Henry sells for $128 million
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Jun 12, 2024

A 23-story student housing tower in downtown Tampa has sold for $128.1 million.

Strategic Facility Partners, based in Columbus, Ohio, closed on The Henry at 100 E. Tyler St. in early June, according to Hillsborough County property records. The seller was a joint venture partnership of Development Ventures Group, or Deven, and Intown Group, which built the tower in 2021.

The Henry has 188 apartments and 537 beds.

Strategic Facility Partners is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that partners with institutions, developers and owners of student housing. Richard Rieth, president of SFP, told the Tampa Bay Business Journal that the purchase price and transaction costs were funded entirely through the sale of tax-exempt and taxable bonds.

Rieth said his firm acquired The Henry through a “previous relationship” with some members of the development team.

“We partnered with RBC Capital Markets to sell the bonds and had tremendous interest from investors for the project — more than 10 times the amount we needed to fund,” Rieth wrote in an email.

Once SFP meets its financing obligations with any asset, Rieth said, excess cash flow is given to the schools it partners with, funds student scholarships or is reinvested in the property. At The Henry, Rieth said, SFP has an affiliation agreement with the University of South Florida’s Morsani College of Medicine and a marketing agreement with the University of Tampa. The previous ownership, he said, did not have an agreement with USF.

“The Henry continues to be UT’s preferred off-campus housing option,” Eric Cardenas, a spokesperson for UT, wrote in an email. “UT has partnered with SFP, similar to the previous owner and property managers of The Henry, to support the UT student living experience. However, UT does not own, operate or manage The Henry.”