West Palm Beach Office Project Lands 40K SF HQ Relocation
A boutique office building in Downtown West Palm Beach is now more than 50% pre-leased after a telecommunications firm announced it would relocate its headquarters to the under-construction property.
Dycom Industries will relocate from Palm Beach Gardens to 40K SF on the top two floors of 300 Banyan, a 12-story building with 115K SF of offices that is expected to deliver next month. The deal marks the second lease to be signed at the tower, which is being built by Brand Atlantic Real Estate Partners and Wheelock Street Capital.
Dycom will be the property’s anchor tenant and will join the Connecticut-based private equity firm Alvarez & Marsal, which signed a 10K SF lease on the 10th floor of the tower in August.
The landlords were represented by Cushman & Wakefield brokers Brian Gale and Anthony Librizzi, with Colliers’ Derek Baker representing Dycom in the deal, according to a release.
Gale said his firm was negotiating leases with four other prospective tenants at the property, which he described in an email as “the nicest and most amenitized boutique office building in South Florida.”
300 Banyan is among the priciest office buildings in Palm Beach, with asking rates at $115 per SF. Its six floors of office space have 13-foot ceilings ensconced in glass above a five-deck parking garage and a ground-floor lobby with a café, a 3,500 SF bistro and a 4K SF outdoor dining space.
The tower has private terraces on three floors, along with a roof deck and amenities between the parking garage and office space that include a fitness center and an outdoor lounge with reflecting pools.
“As we got to know each other throughout the leasing process, it was rewarding to see how Dycom’s leadership placed strategic value on 300 Banyan’s innovative offerings as a cornerstone for their corporate objectives,” Andrew Dance, managing partner at West Palm Beach-based Brand Atlantic, said in a statement.
300 Banyan is being built alongside 111 Olive, a three-story historic building that Brand Atlantic and Connecticut-based Wheelock are renovating to create the combined project Banyan & Olive.
West Palm Beach’s office market was a major pandemic-era destination for companies, especially financial firms, looking to set up South Florida outposts. The likes of Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Elliot Management and Millennium Management took space in the city.
“These guys with a lot of money that are coming down and buying houses, they not only want the newer homes, they want newer office space too,” Librizzi said at a Bisnow event in December, held on the ground floor of 300 Banyan.
Class-A asking rents in West Palm’s central business district were $77.27 per SF at the end of the fourth quarter, up 14% year-over-year, according to Cushman & Wakefield. High-quality office space there is priced around $5 more per SF than in Miami’s urban core and 50% higher than in Downtown Fort Lauderdale.
Palm Beach County’s 11.6% vacancy rate at the end of the year was the lowest in the state, even though leasing activity was down 31% year-over-year as the market returned to a pre-pandemic leasing pace, according to C&W.
Construction on 300 Banyan Blvd. and renovations at 111 Olive Ave. began in late 2022 after Wheelock and Brand Atlantic locked in an $87M construction loan from New York-based ACORE Capital. The joint venture acquired the properties for $20M in June 2021, according to property records.
The Banyan & Olive project is delivering as Related Cos. also invests heavily in office development in Downtown West Palm Beach.
The New York-based developer acquired three office buildings there starting in 2020 and has a 2.5M SF office pipeline, Related Senior Vice President Jordan Rathlev said in December.
“Chairman Steve Ross’s vision for West Palm Beach is to make this the model American city, and he's working very closely with the mayor on that,” Rathlev said.
