VanTrust Real Estate LLC wants to build an office building in Southside near the Deutsche Bank site at 5201 Gate Parkway.
No tenant is listed, raising questions whether the building will be developed as a speculative structure.
A speculative office development of that size would mark a turn in the Southside market, which hasn’t seen projects that large without announced anchor tenants in years.
Plans show a 164,211-square-foot building on about 11 acres at the address, which encompasses undeveloped property that VanTrust would acquire.
Jacksonville VanTrust executive John Carey declined comment.
VanTrust has applied for a preliminary site plan and traffic capacity approval, a first step toward applying for a building permit.
A conceptual site plan and conditional capacity availability statement application with the city show VanTrust would buy the property from the Arthur Chester Skinner III Trust, comprising members of the Skinner family.
England, Thims & Miller Inc. is the civil engineer.
Chip Skinner said Tuesday the property purchase could close today.
Plans don’t detail how many stories the building will be, but the height indicates five stories. The statement shows 947 parking spaces at the site.
VanTrust, based in Kansas City, Mo., maintains a regional office led by Carey as executive vice president. Carey also is founding partner of Whitehall Realty Partners LLC in Jacksonville.
Occupancy rates are high for Class A office space and rents are rising for existing space in the site area.
Skinner referred questions to VanTrust when asked if the building had a tenant, but said speculative construction would be a positive sign for the office development market.
“It’s indicating that the occupancy levels are getting strong enough and the existing rent structure is moving up enough where VanTrust believes the market needs a new speculative building,” Skinner said.
VanTrust also plans speculative office buildings, totaling about 675,000 square feet, in the Nocatee market. The company has said infrastructure work will start this fall.
The CBRE real estate firm said in its second-quarter office report that an almost 63,000-square-foot speculative building was under construction in the Nocatee area of the Beaches submarket and was the only larger multi-tenant building to break ground in recent years.
It also noted VanTrust’s Nocatee plans and two more suburban projects, both smaller than the Gate Parkway project.
The VanTrust site is next to the three-story, 150,000-square-foot building that Deutsche Bank is leasing. About 800 bank employees moved into the structure and more are expected.
That building was developed in 2006.
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