CBRE to move Tampa office
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Aug 24, 2022

Commercial real estate brokerage CBRE Group Inc. is leaving the central business district for The Heights.

CBRE has signed a lease for 17,455 square feet on the first floor of office development Heights Union at 2002 N. Tampa St., the firm exclusively told the Tampa Bay Business Journal.

Heights Union is part of the mixed-use, Armature Works-anchored Heights district, which is also home to The Pearl apartments and Sprouts Farmers Market Inc.

The firm will move to The Heights from Bank of America Plaza at 101 E. Kennedy Blvd. in the second quarter of 2023. CBRE markets both Heights Union and BofA Plaza for lease. The Heights Union office will have collaborative spaces designed for hybrid working as well as a private 1,500-square-foot outdoor space with shaded seating areas.

Heights Union landed Pfizer Inc.’s 105,000-square-foot operations hub in early 2021. Atlanta-based Cousins Properties acquired Heights Union in October 2021 from the developers, Tampa-based SoHo Capital and Atlanta-based TPA Group.

Under CBRE’s Workplace360 program, launched in 2012, there’s no assigned seating or private offices — not even for Managing Director Mike DiBlasi. All CBRE brokers and support staff will be office nomads.

“The post-pandemic office is still an unknown,” DiBlasi said. “We’re all still trying to figure it out.”

While CBRE (NYSE: CBRE) is the first major brokerage firm to leave Tampa’s central business district, it’s certainly not the first to consider it. In early 2020, both JLL Inc. and Cushman & Wakefield Inc. were considering moves to The Heights and Water Street Tampa. The Covid-19 pandemic ultimately paused those relocations.

The Heights, DiBlasi said, is a “booming area,” and CBRE predicts all of downtown’s districts will be better connected in the coming years.

“We recognized a great opportunity at Heights Union where we could create a new flexible, technology-enabled space on the ground level, a place more office occupiers are considering today for greater access to the outdoors,” he said. “Our Workplace360 office will offer more spaces to collaborate, and our employees will benefit from a growing amenity base nearby, including the Armature Works development.”