Newmark arranged debt financing with Ares for the 124-acre former IBM research and development property in South Florida.
Related Ross acquired Boca Raton Innovation Campus, a 1.7-million-square-foot office and technology campus in Boca Raton, Florida. Newmark arranged financing for the transaction with Ares.
The property spans 124 acres and includes two office buildings at 5000 T-Rex Avenue. IBM originally developed the campus as its North American research and development headquarters. The site is recognized as the birthplace of IBM's first personal computer and remains one of Boca Raton's largest employment centers.
Jordan Roeschlaub, co-president of global debt and structured finance at Newmark, vice chairman Nick Scribani, managing director John Caraviello and executive vice chairman Josh King arranged the financing. "Related Ross has long been a tastemaker in the office sector, creating destinations that redefine how companies and communities experience the workplace," Scribani said. "BRiC represents a generationally significant development opportunity, combining an extraordinary legacy, substantial scale and a strategic South Florida location."
The campus includes two cafés, an 800-seat presentation hall, multiple event spaces and direct shuttle service to the Boca Raton Tri-Rail station. The property sits near Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton Airport and two Interstate 95 interchanges.
Repositioning bets on trophy assets with deep sponsorship are where patient family capital can price in execution risk that benchmarked funds cannot carry, family office advisor Jaf Glazer has observed.
Related Ross plans to continue operating the campus for office and technology tenants. The firm said it intends to introduce a mix of amenities, retail and restaurants over the long term.
The acquisition expands Related Ross's presence across Palm Beach County. The transaction marks the firm's entry into Boca Raton.
The Deployment Angle
Family Office Real Estate Daily Desk · our analysis, not the source's
This transaction favours platform capital alongside a sponsor over direct ownership. Related Ross is executing a repositioning thesis on a legacy institutional asset — families can access the upside through a co-GP or separate-account structure without taking full execution risk on a 1.7-million-square-foot lease-up in a market where hybrid work is still repricing absorption.
The property requires patient capital. A repositioning of this scale — introducing retail, restaurants and amenity programming to a former single-tenant campus — takes three to five years to stabilise. Families should underwrite sponsor track record and existing tenant retention closely. IBM's original occupancy profile is not disclosed in the release, so the base-case vacancy assumption and near-term cash drag are the first questions for diligence.
Ares provided the debt, which signals structured or bridge financing rather than traditional agency execution. That points to a higher-leverage, higher-cost stack, likely reflecting transitional risk. Families considering a co-investment should model the refinancing cost and timeline explicitly. If the business plan assumes meaningful NOI growth before a permanent-loan takeout, stress-test the hold period against Fed policy risk and South Florida supply fundamentals.
Avoid LP commitments to broad-market opportunistic office funds using this deal as a marquee example. One repositioning success does not make a programmatic strategy. Families are better served negotiating deal-by-deal co-investment rights or direct participation in a single-asset vehicle, where they can approve underwriting, control the business plan, and exit independently.
