Two executives in the vaping industry are the latest investors to take in downtown Orlando’s skyline from a penthouse suite on the 16th floor of The Plaza at the corner of Orange Avenue and Church Street.
Sean Sleiman and Sonny Westmoreland Jr., owners of Monster Vape Labs, paid $2.65 million in November 2021 for the entire 16th floor of the north tower, which includes a 10,891-square-foot contemporary penthouse unit and its accompanying 10,000-square-foot panoramic sky terrace.
Roger Soderstrom, Jr. and John Kurtz, brokers with Stirling International Real Estate, represented the seller ACM DT Properties, LLC, a Florida-based real estate firm.
“This extraordinary penthouse unit, with high-end custom appointments, spacious indoor and outdoor workspaces, and 360-degree views of Lake Eola and the Downtown Orlando area, is ideal for a regional or U.S. headquarters,” Soderstrom said, “and definitely an investor confidence booster.”
Features include more than multiple private offices and open workspaces with floor-to-ceiling windows, a private elevator lobby and a catering kitchen. Seaside Bank & Trust provided $2.25 million in financing for the deal.
The buyers own several vape shops and a 47,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Orlando that produces their tobacco-free vaping products. They are customizing the office space, which will serve as their new corporate headquarters for Monster Labs, with executive offices as well as accounting, sales and marketing departments. They were represented by Mike Stewart of Southern Realty Group. He told GrowthSpotter the buyers looked at several locations for the office but chose The Plaza penthouse for its prime location and outdoor space, which is perfect for their vaping parties and other marketing events.
“They decided they wanted to be downtown,” Stewart said. “They love the skyline, and one of the owners is a big (Orlando) Magic fan, so he’s down there quite a bit.”
Kurtz and Soderstrom sold and leased more than 240,000 square feet in The Plaza — downtown Orlando’s twin office towers on Orange Avenue at the corner of Church Street — during the 18-month period since the beginning of the pandemic.
“In 2020, we didn’t see a whole lot of people in the first half of the year. Then the floodgates opened,” Soderstrom said.
Those transactions include the sale of 18 office condominiums in The Plaza, totaling more than 120,000 square feet with a sales volume of $27,000,000. Among them was the $2.7 million sale of the 21st-floor penthouse in The Plaza’s South Tower a little over a year ago. They currently have contracts pending for more than 28,000 square feet in the two towers, with another three units coming to market in the next 90 days.
Soderstrom said many of the units have outdoor space and feature keyless entrances, making the office condos attractive investments. “A lot of the condos we’ve sold have balconies, and that’s hard to find in an office setting,” he said. “There’s not a lot of real estate for sale in downtown Orlando, and people want to own something instead of renting. It doesn’t hurt that we’re right on the corner of main and main.”
The Plaza, which is comprised of two office towers with approximately 400,000 square feet, a residential condominium tower, and a ground-floor retail area that includes a movie theater, was built in 2006 and 2007.
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