Optima closes on The Huntington Building in Cleveland

Optima International out of Miami Beach Florida recently closed on the The Huntington Building in Cleveland, a 22-story office building consisting of roughly 1.3 million square feet.  The story broke in late March by the Plain Dealer that Optima was considering the acquisition.  Word on the street is that they paid $18m, or $13.85/SF.  This is going to be very interesting to watch considering that over 600,000 SF of tenants will be vacating the building over the next few years and Costar reports a current total vacancy of 335,000 SF.  In addition, since purchasing One Cleveland Center two years ago, Optima has yet to make a new market office deal in that building. As probably an understatement, the Cleveland commercial real estate community is very interested to see what Optima has in store. There is apparently no redevelopment plan in place. Very interesting indeed.