Downtown building purchase could bring insurance company to downtown Bradenton

BRADENTON -- A growing Sarasota worker's compensation insurance company has purchased one of downtown Bradenton's largest office buildings and may use it as its new headquarters.

SUNZ Insurance, a 10-year-old company that employs about 40 people, bought the six-story First Bank building at 1301 Sixth Avenue W. on Dec. 30 for $2.295 million. The seller, Missouri-based First Bank, had owned the building since 2007.

Terri Stevens, president of SUNZ Insurance, confirmed the sale this week and said her company may use the building to house its own operations in the future.

"We are contemplating relocating our offices to downtown Bradenton," she said.

The sale to SUNZ marks the fifth time the 59,000-square-foot building has changed hands since it was built in 1976. Owned largely by a succession of banks that located offices in downtown Bradenton over the years, the building is now mostly vacant. At the time of the December sale, the building was 54 percent occupied, said Christopher Leonard, a Clearwater-based real estate agent with Colliers International.

Leonard, who represented the seller in the transaction, said another 17,000 square feet will empty out early this year as public accounting firm Mauldin & Jenkins vacates the fifth- and sixth-floor offices it had leased.

Current tenants in the building include Keller Williams on the Water and an Insignia Bank branch.

Leonard said the possibility SUNZ will occupy the building is good news for downtown Bradenton. As of the third quarter of 2015, about 29 percent of large-building office space in downtown Bradenton was vacant, according to statistics compiled by the Sarasota office

of Coldwell Banker Commercial NRT.

"I'm excited for the new buyers that are going to occupy the building," Leonard said. "I just think this is a great, great thing."

SUNZ is currently in a 7,900-square foot, one-story office building on Sarasota Center Boulevard near Fruitville Road. The company bought that building for $1.25 million in 2014. It moved its operations there in June.

Bradenton city officials participated in conversations about the sale of the First Bank building when SUNZ indicated interest.

Carl Callahan, Bradenton's city administrator, characterized the purchase as "a real estate investment" and declined to comment on any plans the company may have to move into the downtown business district.

At the same time, he said, the city is interested in seeing the building fully occupied.

"From our perspective, right now we want better occupancy downtown," Callahan said.

"We're going to help them with whatever they want to do here."

Jag Grewal, a broker with Ian Black Real Estate of Sarasota, represented SUNZ in the building purchase. He said he had been watching the property and took notice when its list price dropped from $4 million to $2.29 million. That piqued his client's interest.

"Why this worked is you had a user, the price was right and the city of Bradenton is great to deal with," he said.

The selling price is the lowest paid on the open market for the building. The previous low was $3.5 million in 1999. Coast Bank paid the highest price, $6.8 million, in 2004. First Bank took over ownership of the building after it acquired Coast Bank in 2007.

According to its website, SUNZ was founded as a workers' compensation solutions provider for professional employer organizations, staffing companies, and large employers in various industries. In June, SUNZ CEO Steve Herrig said the company had experienced "tremendous growth" over the previous year and was seeking to expand its workforce.

Matt M. Johnson, Herald business reporter, can be reached at 941-745-7027 or on Twitter @MattAtBradenton.

This story was originally published January 7, 2016 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Downtown building purchase could bring insurance company to downtown Bradenton ."