The hard construction cost is expected to be at least $150 per sf or an aggregate $50 million.

Charlotte-based First Union Bank will formally announce next week it will be the anchor tenant, taking at least 100,000 sf for an estimated 10 years at a probable aggregate rent of $25 million or $25 per sf.

The lease would be one of the largest class A office contracts signed here in the past five years. First Union would consolidate offices now leased in two separate Downtown buildings.

Construction of the building is expected to be on a fast-track 18-month schedule with completion in the first or second quarter 2003, construction industry sources which have completed comparable projects tell GlobeSt.com.

The bank and Carter declined all comment on the venture, but representatives of Orlando's Municipal Planning Board confirmed to GlobeSt.com that Carter had filed preliminary conceptual renderings and construction plans for the building. Plans show three-levels of ground floor parking topped by nine levels of office space.

Carter and the city are also talking of joint venturing the construction of a separate nearby parking garage.

Carter is scheduled to make its first presentation to the city May 15. City council could vote on a development permit at its June 4 public meeting.

Carter is buying the 66,000-sf pad for the project from local developer Cameron Kuhn, a transplanted Chicago apartment owner now considered one of the largest Downtown Orlando commercial property owners. Tom D. Cook, vice president/development in Carter's Orlando office who has represented Kuhn in all of his investments, declined comment on the proposed office venture.

"We have a confidentiality agreement with First Union stating they will make any and all announcements," Cook tells GlobeSt.com.

Kuhn couldn't be reached at GlobeSt.com's publication deadline but land brokers intimate with the pricing structure of Downtown commercial parcels tell GlobeSt.com the negotiated price will come in at about $6.6 million or $100 per sf.

"At that number, whoever is going to put up an office structure will need to get at least $25 (per sf rent) for the space just to break even," a leasing vice president at a Downtown brokerage tells GlobeSt.com on condition of anonymity.

The venture surfaces amid a softening first-quarter office market that saw vacancies grow in metro Orlando's 28 million-sf inventory to 10.9% from 9.3% in fourth quarter 2000, according to Grubb Ellis & Co. The 6.1 million-sf central business district has 525,710 sf of available space or a vacancy level of 8.5%.

Three million sf of new class A product has been added Downtown in the past two years. A total 274,182 sf of subleased product was dumped on the 10 Orlando submarkets in the first quarter.

That volume is expected to grow in the second and third quarters as corporate users such as Charles Schwab Corp. layoff staffs and consolidate office space.

Carter's plans for a new Downtown office tower follows shelved plans by two other developers for comparable projects in the past five years.

Columbus, OH-based Pizzuti Co. still hasn't broken ground on a scaled-down 300,000-sf office building on 10 acres facing the new $200 million Orange County Courthouse complex at Orange Avenue and Livingston Street.

Charlotte-based Faison Co. and later Trammell Crow Co. had planned an 18-story, 260,000-sf building at Livingston Street and Rosalind Avenue, also across from the courthouse.

"Carter may be able to pull it off this time, where the others couldn't, since they (Carter) would be coming out of the ground at the end of 2002 when the economy is supposed to be on the upturn again," a commercial lending officer at a Downtown bank tells GlobeSt.com on condition of anonymity.

"With First Union expected to commit to at least half the space, that would put the project on a solid funding level."