Bank of America has paid $155 million to buy five buildings and two parking garages it previously leased at its Southside Boulevard operations campus in Jacksonville, Florida, according to Jacksonville business press reporting Aug. 10. The sale closed Aug. 6.
The purchase covers roughly 820,000 square feet across Buildings 200, 300, 400, 500 and 600 at the campus at 9000 Southside Blvd., just north of The Avenues mall in Jacksonville. Bank of America bought the properties from Ladder Capital, a New York City-based commercial real estate finance company that owned the buildings while the bank operated as a tenant.
A long-running Jacksonville commitment
The Southside campus is one of Bank of America’s major operations hubs, supporting more than 7,100 employees across consumer banking, wealth management, technology and other operations and staff functions. The bank has steadily invested in the campus in recent years, including permitted renovation projects worth several million dollars apiece disclosed over the past two years, on top of the newly announced acquisition.
By converting from tenant to owner, Bank of America locks in long-term control of a campus it already depends on for thousands of jobs, rather than remaining exposed to lease renewal terms set by a landlord. It is a familiar move for large employers with big regional back-office footprints: owning the real estate outright removes lease-renegotiation risk and can be cheaper over a long enough time horizon than continuing to pay rent on a campus a company intends to occupy indefinitely.
What it means
Verified facts: Bank of America now owns the core buildings at its Jacksonville operations hub outright, having paid $155 million to acquire roughly 820,000 square feet it previously leased from Ladder Capital.
RealtyWire analysis: the deal reinforces Jacksonville’s standing as a significant back-office and operations center for major financial institutions, a role that has helped the metro’s office market hold up better than gateway cities facing steeper vacancy pressure. It also lands amid a broader pattern of large employers converting leased footprints into owned real estate in growth-friendly Southern metros — a dynamic also visible in Tishman Speyer’s recent entry into the Charlotte market and broader momentum described in reporting on Florida’s construction activity even as some counties see permitting slow.
What to watch: whether Bank of America discloses further capital investment into the Southside campus now that it owns the underlying real estate outright, and whether other large employers with significant leased footprints in the Jacksonville market pursue similar buy-versus-lease conversions.
