Related Ross has bought the Boca Raton Innovation Campus, the 1.7 million-square-foot office and technology complex in Boca Raton, Fla., that IBM built as its North American research and development campus and that Newmark describes as the recognized birthplace of the company’s first personal computer. Newmark Group announced on Sept. 18 that it arranged the acquisition financing, with Ares as the lender.
The purchase price and the loan amount were not disclosed. Newmark said the debt was placed by Jordan Roeschlaub, co-president of global debt and structured finance, Vice Chairman Nick Scribani and Managing Director John Caraviello, working with Executive Vice Chairman Josh King.
For Related Ross β the West Palm Beach-based firm led by Stephen Ross that has spent the past several years assembling a Palm Beach County office portfolio β the deal is the firm’s entry into Boca Raton. The company said it will keep running the property as an office and technology campus while pursuing a longer-term plan to add what it described as a curated mix of amenities, retail and restaurants.
A campus, not a building
BRiC, as the property is branded, sits on 124 acres at 5000 T-Rex Avenue and spans two buildings. It is near Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton Airport and two Interstate 95 interchanges, and it runs a shuttle to the Boca Raton Tri-Rail station. The amenity roster includes two cafes, an 800-seat presentation hall and multiple event spaces. Newmark called it one of the city’s largest employment centers.
“Related Ross has long been a tastemaker in the office sector, creating destinations that redefine how companies and communities experience the workplace,” Scribani said in the announcement. “BRiC represents a generationally significant development opportunity, combining an extraordinary legacy, substantial scale and a strategic South Florida location.”
That is a broker talking about his client. The campus’s recent record is the more useful evidence. CP Group, which has owned and repositioned BRiC, said on Oct. 16, 2025 that it had signed more than 266,000 square feet of leases there across three new deals and two renewals, and that it was nearing completion of a $100 million capital improvement program that added a wellness center, dining, fitness studios and a 1,100-space parking garage. The largest of those leases went to healthcare staffing firm Allstar Recruiting Locums, which doubled its footprint to 42,697 square feet in a move from Deerfield Beach, Fla.
Why a big suburban office trade is news
Financing a suburban office campus of this size has been the hard part of the office market for several years. Lenders have favored stabilized, amenitized, well-leased product in growth markets, and few assets above a million square feet have cleared those tests.
Two things appear to make this one work, on our reading. The first is location: South Florida has been one of the few office markets drawing corporate relocations rather than shedding tenants. The second is that BRiC has already been through its capital cycle, with the $100 million repositioning largely complete before the sale rather than ahead of the buyer.
Ares’ role fits the pattern of the past several years, in which alternative lenders and debt funds have written much of the office paper that banks and CMBS conduits stepped back from, especially where the business plan involves reprogramming space rather than simply holding it.
What Related Ross does next is the part to watch. The stated plan β retail, restaurants and amenities layered onto an operating office campus β is the mixed-use approach the firm has used in West Palm Beach, and 124 acres gives it far more room than an urban site would. The firm has not announced a density or unit count for any residential component, and none is described in the financing announcement.
Office repositioning of this scale is happening elsewhere too: Lincoln Property Co. and Strategic Value Partners recently finished a 500,000-square-foot office redevelopment in Playa Vista, Calif., and South Florida sponsors continue to raise fresh equity, as when Neology Group closed a $175 million capital raise this year. More commercial real estate coverage is on the site.
