Three weeks ago, Kuhn paid Capital Partners Inc. of Orlando $37 million, or $96.10 per sf, for 23-story, 385,000-sf SunTrust Tower Jacksonville Center. The 16-year-old property at 76 Laura St. is 50% leased, as GlobeSt.com previously reported. Area construction sources tell GlobeSt.com the current estimated minimum hard construction cost for a class A office building is $200 per sf, up from about $150 per sf five years ago.

The steel-framed Barnett Bank Building, once an architectural gem of Downtown Jacksonville with panoramic river views of the St. Johns River, is expected to be redeveloped as an office, residential and retail enterprise. It will have "a live-work-play office-residential approach," Kuhn has told Jacksonville Mayor John Peyton.

"Our solutions will be out-of-the box in terms of what anyone has thought about for the building," Kuhn says. "We will implement a rehab strategy that will preserve all that is special about this building, while bringing it back online as a productive part of the Downtown fabric."

Kuhn noted "the significant challenges with the asbestos abatement" in the building and "the life/safety code issues that exist in every structure that was built in 1927 and is being rehabilitated in 2005."

In Orlando, the developer has purchased an rehabilitated 22 landmark buildings over the past 15 years and is developing the $140-million Premiere Trade Plaza, a mixed-use development at Church Street and Orange Avenue, the center of Downtown's financial and commercial districts.