Ginn Lease Brings Lincoln's Celebration Place Building Occupancy to 50%

The lease, at an estimated aggregate rent of $1.64 million ($20 per sf), brings the one-year-old 215 Building on 9.5 acres to 50% occupancy. Ginn Co. of Palm Coast, FL in Flagler County is one of Central Florida's most aggressive developers.

For Lincoln, the Ginn lease is encouraging as it comes in a 1.1 million-sf submarket that is showing a 16.4% vacancy level, according to the latest statistics from Grubb & Ellis Co. There is 182,000 sf vacant at a class A average asking rent of $20.78 per sf and a class B quoted rent of $15.90 per sf. Net absorption in fourth quarter 2001 was only 56,502 sf and 113,444 sf for the entire 2001. There is no new office construction in the Osceoloa/Kissimmee/Celebration submarket.

Ginn's planned 2,500-acre Reunion Resort in southwest Osceola is 15 miles from the Celebration Building. Reunion will have 5,000 timeshare and single-family units, 3,000 hotel rooms, 540,000 sf of commercial and three golf courses.

At another 1,700-acre business park off the Central Florida Greeneway in south Orlando, 10 miles from the 215 Building, Ginn plans 4.95 million square feet of comer, 3,000 hotel rooms and 1,200 residential units.

In neighboring Lake County, the developer's planned Pine Lake community will have 500 residential units, a golf course and an undetermined amount of retail. All three projects are individual $1 billion jobs over a 20-year buildout period.

The 109-acre Celebration Place is a multi-tenant business community planned for eight office buildings totaling one million sf. Three buildings, totaling 440,000 sf, have been completed. Duke-Weeks Realty Corp. of Indianapolis, IN finished its two-story, 80,000-sf, phase one office structure on 12.61 acres in May 2000.

Another name player at Celebration Place is Chicago-based Pritzker Residential LLC owned by the Pritzker family and headed by Penny Pritzker. Pritzker Residential is developing 726 apartment units in the first of a two-phased multifamily project on 60 acres purchased from Celebration Co. in October 1999 for an undisclosed sum but believed to be at least $100,000 per acre ($2.30 per sf). The site is on Celebration Boulevard adjacent to Interstate 4.