ORLANDO—For all the talk about the revival in Downtown Miami, Orlando is seeing some action of its own on the office front. Century Plaza just traded for $14.2 million in a deal that marks Tower Realty Partners’ reentry into the Downtown Orlando office market.

Tower Realty Partners and Vancouver, B.C.-based Second City Capital Partners snapped up Century Plaza for $83.50 per square foot. The 12-story, 170,000 square-foot office building is located at 135 West Central Boulevard.  

“The biggest challenge with this deal was that the federal bankruptcy court, which is a tenant in the building, is planning to relocate to the old federal court house building under renovation,” Reid Berman, a principal of Tower Realty, tells GlobeSt.com. “The court’s departure was a moving target and we had to figure out the best way to underwrite that vacancy.”

Currently, Century Plaza is 82% leased. Fairwinds Credit Union is the anchor tenant. This is the second major office building transaction in the past few months in Downtown Orlando—the 600,000 square-foot SunTrust Center traded for $131.5 million in late March.

"The opportunity to purchase a well-located, under-performing asset in the downtown Orlando office market for $83 per square foot was too tempting to pass up," Berman, principal at Tower. "The building's profile is a perfect fit for our investment strategy."

In 2007, Tower sold the 19-story One Orlando Centre office building at Magnolia Avenue and Orange Avenue for $90.6 million. Berman says the Century Plaza purchase adds to Tower's current portfolio of office buildings totaling more than 3.5 million square feet.

CB Richard Ellis represented the seller, MetLife Real Estate Investments. Tiffany Zullo of Tower will handle leasing the building.