Where most people saw outdated office buildings on a sprawling Plantation campus, Michael Burns saw potential.
“We acquired and inherited a really good underlying asset,” Burns said of the 850,000-square-foot Motorola Solutions office park at 8000 W. Sunrise Boulevard. “The buildings have good bones and great infrastructure. It just simply needed an injection — a new plan and vision.”
Burns’ Torburn Partners bought the site in October 2013 for $38.1 million and recently received approvals from the city to renovate the complex, now called the Plantation Pointe Office Park.
Motorola once occupied all of the offices on the site while manufacturing beepers, two-way radios and cell phones in what was one of the region’s largest employment centers. The electronics giant downsized dramatically in recent years but negotiated a deal with Northbrook, Ill.-based Torburn after the sale to lease about a third of the 850,000 square feet.
Torburn has since signed two more large tenants to fill the balance of the existing space. Magic Leap, a developer of entertainment technology, moved in recently with plans to expand, while health care company Amsurg Corp. will arrive in the first quarter of 2016.
Baptist Health South Florida is building a 15,000-square-foot endoscopy center on the property, while Torburn is adding 40,000 square feet of retail that will be connected to the offices by a plaza. The company also is updating the landscaping, renovating an existing cafeteria and adding a fitness center.
To accommodate the retail, Torburn is moving a retention pond to the southeast corner of the campus.
Starbucks and Chipotle are among eight national chains coming to the site next fall. A Walgreens also is planned, at Sunrise Boulevard and University Drive.
“We want to be able to provide amenities for our office tenants so their employees can minimize the amount of time they have to leave the campus,” Burns said.
Motorola’s Plantation plant opened in 1971 and once employed roughly 5,000 people before the company reduced its workforce worldwide over the past two decades. Motorola Solutions employs about 1,200 people there now.
Plantation Pointe will have roughly 3,000 employees at full capacity, according to Burns.
“It’s a great story for that market,” said Jonathan Kingsley, a commercial real estate broker for Colliers International in South Florida. “They’re putting it back on the map.”
Bringing retailers to the site is a smart move, Kingsley said, adding that the Motorola complex was typical of the lush corporate campuses built in South Florida decades ago.
The sites incorporated plenty of vacant land to serve as a buffer to neighboring businesses, but that property is badly needed for development now as the region runs out of room to grow, Kingsley said.
Barbara Hall, a Greenberg Traurig land use attorney who represented Plantation Pointe, said the project had moving parts that required city approvals in five phases. Hall said Plantation officials allowed Torburn to begin work during the approvals.
“I think there was a lot of skepticism at first, but over time the city has been just delighted,” Hall said.
Plantation Mayor Diane Veltri Bendekovic said the renovated complex is a boon for a city that saw highly paid workers leave the area after the Motorola cutbacks.
She said Magic Leap will do for the site and the city what Motorola did decades ago: attract skilled labor.
“It’s the rebirth of that corner,” Bendekovic said. “They’re bringing in a whole new generation of workers. It’s exactly what you would want for a city.”
