"Already, I've been approached by one or two major telecommunications companies," Stein, president and CEO of Miami Beach-based Savitar Realty Advisors, tells GlobeSt.com. "For a tech company to replicate this building, you're looking at $350 to $400 a square foot." Indeed, the 143,000-sf building Stein purchased for about $9.4 million in 1997 bears all the characteristics of a defense stronghold--built to operate almost under any act of human or nature.

"Back when IBM negotiated the sale-leaseback, it was a little different," Stein says. "The lease rate, compared to today's standard, was substantially below market value. I would entertain a sale, but it would have to be an attractive price." Replete with 24-inch, poured concrete walls, the building at Military Trail and Spanish River Boulevard possesses some of the most highly sought-after amenities available in a high-tech data center.

Besides a direct feed to a Florida Power & Light electrical substation, the facility can draw power from the city's electrical grid. If all else fails, it can operate on a 10-megawatt generator linked to a 20,000-gallon tank of diesel fuel. The list of amenities includes two Sonnet fiber-optic rings that allow for multidirectional rerouting of telecommunications in case of line outages and twin cooling towers capable of sending the building temperature to 60 degrees in 20 minutes.

Economic factors figured in IBM's decision to relocate to the Peninsular Corporate Center at Congress Avenue and I-95, company spokesman Sean A. Tetpon tells GlobeSt.com. "Our leases were up in 2000, and our real estate team determined that Boca still would be the best place for our employees and to have the least possible impact on them," Tetpon says. Instead, IBM signed a multiyear lease to occupy the new office space the Codina Group is presently building. The company expects to begin relocation of staff later this spring, with the intent to fully occupy the building by year end.

Much of the work at the new site will focus on voice-recognition programming, global consultation and sales and services for IBM hardware and software. The site is designed to complement the company's Latin America headquarters operation in Coral Gables. "South Florida represents the breadth of our company," Tetpon says.

Since IBM decided to vacate, Stein has spent considerable time just learning about the building's amenities, in addition to embarking on an aggressive sales strategy that relies on the Internet Website, www.techcenter051.com, for exposure. "First of all, I had to educate myself," Stein says. "There was some work going on in there I didn't even have access to. They do some national defense work. But this is the perfect site for an application service provider, because IBM primarily uses it as a data center."

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IBM Vacating 143,000-SF Site of Once Secret High-Tech Research

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