Long-Vacant Downtown Pizzuti Tract Sells

Headed by David Barley, a longtime area developer-investor, the trust expects to close on a deal this week that will give national landowner-developer Ronald A. Pizzuti of Columbus, OH $17.1 million, or $3 million per acre (70 cents per sf), for the property.

About $1.3 billion of worth of new development is under way Downtown in one of the busiest commercial construction periods the central business district has seen in 20 years.

David Ortiz of Global Investment Group Inc. of Miami is funding the land acquisition and hired Palm Beach Land Trust Inc. as the developer, Barley tells GlobeSt.com. Jack Lynch, formerly with Cushman & Wakefield of Florida Inc. and one of the city's best-known brokers, is marketing director for the Downtown City Center, the Palm Beach Land Trust project's tentative name.

The Pizzuti land has been sought by at least a dozen investor-developers since 1997 when the Federal Aviation Administration rejected plans for a 30-story, 800,000-sf office and retail plaza planned as Orlando City Center by Pizzuti Development Co. The FAA ruled Pizzuti's proposed 493-foot building would interfere with flights from the nearby Orlando Executive Airport. Since then, the land has been on the market.

Barley did the deal with Ronald Pizzuti's son, Joel. "It took over six months because other suitors were after the land and Pizzuti really wanted to develop it," Barley tells GlobeSt.com. "It was a tough negotiation and I really had to be persistent. In the end, I think we got it because they believed that I wanted to build a project that would reflect well on them." The buyer of record is called Downtown Plaza LLC.

Barley tells GlobeSt.com, "It really wasn't just about the money." Still, Barley was able to pull off a deal for prime dirt that at $69.69 per sf is still less than another developer-investor, Cameron Kuhn, paid in November 2003 for another prime Downtown location, the 2.3-acre Jaymont Block on Orange Avenue 500 yards from the Pizzuti tract.

Kuhn and three locally based law partners wound up paying retired British billionaire industrialist Joseph Lewis and his locally based Tavistock Group $10.8 million or $4.7 million per acre and $108.26 per sf. That per-sf and per-acre price remain unprecedented for large Downtown land deals. Kuhn is developing a $140-million, mixed-use venture on the site.

At about $70 per sf, Barley calls his group's acquisition "a great price." He tells GlobeSt.com, "we don't have any concerns about the price. It was fair to Pizzuti and us."

Orange County real estate records show Pizzuti bought the 5.6-acre tract and an adjoining 5.2-acre tract in 1995 for $14.2 million, or $1.31 million per acre ($30.10 per sf), from William M. duPont, a Louisville, KY horse breeder and former owner of the Orlando Magic basketball team.

Barley's conceptual plans allow his group to build up to 1.6 million sf of mixed-use space on the Pizzuti land but he tells GlobeSt.com he may top off the project at 800,000 sf. The groundbreaking is tentatively set for November.

Two condominium towers totaling an estimated 400 units will sit atop a seven-story parking garage. Undetermined retail and restaurant space is also planned. One bank has already approached Barley for leasing "significant space" in one of the buildings, the developer tells GlobeSt.com.

"More important to us is the University of Central Florida stuff happening by the Expo building, especially the media school," Barley says. "We are targeting the so-called 'creative class' and might have one or two buildings dedicated to that, as well as [a building for] lawyers" tenants.

Barley is confident his project will be economically feasible. "We could build 500,000 sf and do well with our land cost," he says. "I take the process we are going through--economic studies, meeting with UCF and all the other players and architects--very seriously and this project will be what the market demands."

The Palm Beach Land Trust has hired New York-based Project for Public Space to guide the project.