Tarragon Boosts Florida Investment Portfolio

Tarragon South Development Corp., the locally based arm of Tarragon Corp., and Sunvest Communities LLC of Hollywood paid Prudential Insurance Co. and Epoch Properties Inc. of Winter Park $121,131 per unit for the three-year-old property in the MetroWest residential and commercial community near the Universal Studios campus.

The acquired property will be converted to condominium homes in 2005, according to company officials. Tarragon and Sunvest partnered in October to buy the six-story, 363-unit Downtown Lincoln at Delaney Square apartments from Lincoln Property Co. for $42.2 million or $115,934 per unit. That property is also being converted to condos, as GlobeSt.com previously reported.

In April of this year, Tarragon-Sunvest paid Boca Raton-based Gables Residential $27.5 million, or $119,048 per unit, for the 15-year-old, 231-unit Gables Celebration apartment community in suburban Celebration, a 10-year-old city-of-the-future planned and developed by Walt Disney World Co. The developers have not announced conversion plans for Gables Celebration.

Tarragon's presence in the metro area and Florida continues to grow, especially since the New York investor acquired Guardian Equities Inc., a little-known, privately held investment group from local multifamily developer/investor Alan Ginsburg in July 2003. The stock-cash transaction was valued at nearly $61.6 million, as GlobeSt.com previously reported.

Also in 2003, Tarragon opened its 296-unit, $20.3-million Vintage Cottage Apartment Homes at 9101 Lee Vista Blvd. in the heavily trafficked Orlando International Airport axis at 100% occupancy.

In May 2001, a partnership jointly controlled by Tarragon and Aetna Life Insurance Co. acquired 976 newly completed, two-story garden apartment units in North Florida and South Georgia for $62 million or about $63,525. Tarragon initially developed the three properties in Jacksonville, Orange Park and Savannah, GA.

Tarragon controls about 20,000 apartment units and 1.5 million sf of commercial space aggregately valued at over $1 billion. The bulk of the assets are in Florida, Texas and Connecticut. Tarragon's Florida office is in Fort Lauderdale.