JACKSONVILLE, FL—Crocker is on a Florida commercial real estate acquisition roll lately. The firm just spent $133.2 million to acquire 12 buildings in the Flagler Center business park in Jacksonville, FL.

The 12 buildings add about 1.4 million square feet to Crocker's Florida portfolio. Crocker acquired the assets in a joint venture with New York-based Investcorp.

“This was a rare opportunity to acquire a dozen buildings across three product types at a significant discount to replacement cost,” says Crocker managing partner Tom Crocker. "Jacksonville is a very attractive market, and Flagler Center has the potential for significant return as we apply our asset and property management expertise.”

The acquisition includes the newest class A office and industrial space in Jacksonville's Butler/Baymeadows submarket, which is known as a back-office location catering to companies in the finance and insurance industries. The buildings are 81% percent occupied to tenants including Web.com, Ally Financial, and Kemper Insurance.

All told, Crocker now owns 2.1 million square feet of commercial real estate in Jacksonville, which the firm's research shows is one of the nation's fastest-growing metropolitan service areas (MSAs) and ranks second in the southeastern US for growth in office-using employment since 2009. 

Crocker's holdings at Flagler Center, which is located a mile from the Interstate 95 and Interstate 295 interchange, include 601,168 square feet of class A office space, 399,618 square feet of two-story professional office space, and 357,642 square feet of industrial space. The Boca Raton, FL-based firm owns and manages 8.4 million square feet in the southeastern U.S. and Texas, representing $1.4 billion in transactions.