Tampa Bay Christian Academy has acquired the 160,000-square-foot Floriland Office Center at 9309 N. Florida Ave. for a new campus, giving the roughly 600-student Christian school room for classrooms, offices, a cafeteria, outdoor recreation and future enrollment growth.
The academy spent two years looking for that combination before finding Floriland, a 1972 regional mall converted into offices in the early 1990s and later anchored by Ultimate Medical Academy. The aging North Tampa property offered something increasingly difficult to find in the urban core — enough space and parking for a full school campus near Interstate 275 and East Busch Boulevard.
Buying it required a different kind of financing. Tampa Bay Christian Academy, a nonprofit funded substantially by the state with no tuition paid out of pocket by families, financed the acquisition through tax-exempt bonds rather than a conventional commercial real estate loan.
FL 9-14 Fund LLC sold the property, while Franklin Street’s Pat Kelly and Anthony Suarez worked on the transaction. Franklin Street Property Management will continue managing the 54-year-old former shopping center as Tampa Bay Christian Academy moves in and begins its next phase of growth.
