Source: Palm Beach Post
April 9th 2001
The new leasing agent for the long-vacant D&D Centre in West Palm Beach wants to snag one retailer willing to take-don’t laugh-much of the three-story building.
Absurd? Maybe, but Grubb & Ellis Co. wants to give it a shot anyway. The Boca Raton-based firm is asking $27.50 a square foot, not including expenses.
“It is ambitious,” concedes broker Russ Bornstein. “But who knows? Maybe we could get a Crate & Barrel or somebody else that didn’t get into CityPlace.”
D&D Infocom bought the 144,000-square foot eyesore, at Clematis Street and Dixie Highway, last year for $10 million, planning to turn the second and third floors into a hub for companies needing space for their telecommunications switching equipment. Retail was planned only for the ground floor.
But D&D Infocom’s hiring of Grubb & Ellis to open all three floors to retail is yet another sign that the so-called telecom hotel business is slumping big-time.
The new owners of the former IBM complex in Boca Raton-another of the high-tech hubs-recently said they’re opening the complex, now called the T-Rex Technology Center, to non-telecom tenants. The former BellSouth building on Fern Street in West Palm also is having a tough time finding telecom users.