Google Street View of properties in
551 Southeast Eighth Street and 551 Southeast Fifth Avenue in Delray Beach with CDS International Holdings founder Carl DeSantis (Google Maps, CDS Holdings)
Billionaire Carl DeSantis’ CDS International Holdings has bought a property leased by Bank of America in Delray Beach for $25 million.
Boca Raton-based CDS International purchased the building at 551 Southeast Eighth Street and the bank’s drive-thru ATM adjacent to 551 Southeast Fifth Avenue from a subsidiary of Dallas-based Spirit Realty, according to a press release from the broker. of the buyer.
Keith O’Donnell of Avison Young and Mark Rubin of Colliers represented CDS International. CBRE’s Leslie Maister and Chris Bosworth represented the Spirit Realty subsidiary.
The buildings, totaling 54,765 square feet, were built in 1975 on nearly 4 acres, according to property records. The property is fully leased to the bank.
Spirit Realty, led by CEO Jackson Hsieh, is a triple-net lease real estate investment trust focused on single-tenant industrial, commercial and office real estate, according to its website. The company paid $15 million for the Delray Beach property in 2008.
DeSantis’ first entrepreneurial venture was Sundown Vitamins, a mail order company which he turned into maker of Rexall Sundown vitamins, according to the CDS website. After selling Rexall in 2000 for $1.8 billion, DeSantis branched out into various investments through his Boca Raton-based CDS. They include energy drink maker Celsius Celsius Holdings, which at one point was delisted from Nasdaq but eventually became a popular fitness drink; and indoor farming company Hyperponic, which offers a vertical growing system for everything from cannabis to strawberries, the CDS website says.
CDS also invests in real estate, paying $3.1 million in 2019 for the Delray Beach office building at 401 West Linton Boulevard.
In 2016, CDS sold its stake in the Atlantic Crossing project, also in Delray, to its partner in the venture, Edwards Cos., through a land sale valued at $38.5 million. At the time, the redevelopment effort was bogged down in a lawsuit with the city, with DeSantis claiming CDS is a real estate investor but not a developer.
Some of CDS’s other properties in South Florida are office buildings at 100 Linton Boulevard in Delray Beach and 2424 North Federal Highway in Boca Raton, according to the CDS website.
Delray Beach, a city perhaps best known for its downtown area along Atlantic Avenue, has recently seen good transaction and development activity, but not necessarily in its office market.
In January, James and Marta Batmasians’ Investments Limited purchased a retail and office building at 411 East Atlantic Avenue in downtown Delray Beach for $18.5 million. This was followed by Investments Limited’s $6.5 million purchase of the office building at 630 Atlantic Avenue, also downtown, the same month.
In another recent Delray Beach deal, Jacksonville-based Sleiman Enterprises bought the Publix-anchored Delray Square mall at 14620 South Military Trail, as well as 4751 and 4789 West Atlantic Avenue, for $48 million in February. .