Collier Cos. Buys Tampa Apartments, Plans Student Housing on Site

Tampa—The Collier Cos. of Gainesville, Fla., has acquired the 100-unit Sunset Square Apartments in north Tampa for $6.4 million from Sunset Square Blackhawk Realty Advisors. The two-story property is on Bruce B. Downs Blvd. across the street to the University of South Florida, and adjacent to a VA Hospital.

Befitting its location, Collier plans on demolishing the existing apartments, which are about 50 years old, and developing a new student housing complex to attract a base of renters from the nearby campus. The existing structure will be razed this fall, with construction of the new property starting soon after.

Plans for the new student housing call for about 180 apartment units with 600 bedrooms, though the details haven’t been finalized. The project will likely offer one-, two-, three-, and four-bedroom units. The usual arrangement is for each student to get his or her own bedroom and bathroom, and then share common areas with other students.

Robert Goldfinger, Darron Kattan, Kevin Kelleher, and Zach Ames, all of Franklin Street, represented the buyer in the deal. Collier, as one of the top student housing companies in the country, was best candidate to buy the property, Goldfinger says.

The University of South Florida is a member institution of the State University System of Florida and is in fact the fourth-largest public university in the state, with a total enrollment of more than 47,000. The Collier Cos. owns and manages more than 10,000 student housing apartments in Gainesville, Ocala, Orlando, Tallahassee, Tampa, and other Florida locations, as well as in Oklahoma and Georgia.