A Gateway office building just north of Daniels Parkway sold for $8.9 million, and the buyer plans to demolish it and build an apartment complex.

The Garrett Companies, headquartered in Indianapolis, purchased the 7.5-acre property Dec. 23. Demolition should begin within a few weeks, said Chris Hentschel, director of capital markets and asset management for The Garrett Companies, which also developed Drift at the Forum in Fort Myers and is building Mercantile, an apartment complex also at The Forum in Fort Myers.

GLP Gateway LLC, which paid $12.4 million for the building, had owned the office building since 2015, property records show.

Construction of The Estate, a 256-unit, four-story, five-building apartment complex with a clubhouse and swimming pool, should be finished by summer 2027.

“We’re dozing it,” Hentschel said of the two-story, 63,000-square-foot office building that was built in 1997.

Gartner used it in the early years followed by Alta Resources. Both companies since have moved to newer office buildings a mile south of Gateway, just north of Southwest Florida International Airport.

Gary Tasman, CEO of Cushman & Wakefield Southwest Florida, tried to find more office tenants for 12600 Gateway Blvd., but without success. The data he had explained why, which was why he began pitching it to apartment developers.

“The market has indicated that the highest and best use of this land today is not for a suburban office building even though it was only just built in 1997,” Tasman said. “It’s for multifamily.

“We started out trying to test the market for leasing and really didn’t have very good response. And then, based on the data that we had, we looked at it and said it would actually make more sense to tear it down and build an apartment complex.”

Buying a teardown property isn’t usually how Garrett Companies operates, Hentschel said. But the location near Interstate 75, Florida Gulf Coast University and Southwest Florida International Airport seemed too good of an opportunity.

“It’s the growth,” Hentschel said. “The net migration. The job growth. Fort Myers in particular has made its way to the top growing city in the nation over the past couple of years.

Florida continues to see a ton of net migration. It’s a desirable place to live. So, we love to provide housing there.”

A walk through the existing structure showed a turnkey-ready office building with a ton of space for cubicle-style offices — a style that went out the window when COVID-19 arrived five years ago, Tasman said.

Many office-oriented companies, including Gartner, since have shifted to hybrid work-home schedules, making the cavernous cubicle office style obsolete.

Tasman used the term: “External functional obsolescence.”

“Which means that a building like this in this market in this location is not the highest and best use for the land underneath it,” Tasman said. “The market has indicated that it’s more valuable to build an apartment complex here.”