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Boca Raton just broke ground on its first new office building in nearly two decades, a sign the city once synonymous with retirement living is making a play for the region’s high-end business tenants.
The Aletto, a 140,000-square-foot property rising near Mizner Park, will offer concierge service, a rooftop restaurant — and a test of whether Boca can capture the same wave of corporate interest transforming Miami and West Palm Beach.
“There’s been a lack of quality office supply,” said Scott Brenner, the Colliers broker whose team handles leasing for the project, which has tenant commitments for 65% of its space. “This project was driven by local people who were saying, ‘We’re missing the market, and we’re getting inquiries.’ ”
Boca’s office sector is awakening from a sluggish stretch. For three consecutive years, more Class A office space was vacated than leased, according to brokerage CBRE. That changed in 2025, when net absorption turned positive by 34,900 square feet.
Leasing volume also surged last year to the second-highest level on record, with 970,900 square feet finding takers.
All the while, rents in prime buildings have been climbing. Asking rents for Class A offices in West Boca averaged $44.47 per square foot in the final three months of 2025 — a 29% jump from the same period in 2021, according to CBRE. In East Boca, which includes the downtown office district where Aletto is rising, rents climbed 39% over the same four-year span.
“When you see what’s going on in West Palm Beach and the rents that office buildings are getting, Boca makes a lot of sense,” said Isaac Toledano, CEO of BH Group, part of the investment trio redeveloping Office Depot’s former Boca Raton headquarters. “If you’re a company and your budget is $60, $70, $80 a foot, I’m not sure you can find the space today in West Palm at this rate.”
When Toledano’s group, along with PEBB Enterprises, bought Office Depot’s three-building campus in 2023, the roughly 600,000-square-foot complex was largely empty, he said. Today, the two remaining office buildings — now branded the Eclipse — are 98% leased.
The third building is being demolished to make way for retail as part of a broader redevelopment that will also add 500 apartments. The remaining buildings contain 420,000 square feet of offices. Rents at the Eclipse average $60 per square foot.
Aletto, which broke ground in December, is slated for completion by the end of next year, aiming to fill that gap.
The project at 119 E. Palmetto Park Road will be the first new office building to rise in Boca Raton since the Lynn Financial Center in 2009.
In today’s office market — where companies are trying to entice employees back to the workplace — Aletto is leaning heavily into amenities. The building will offer valet service, a fitness center and a golf-cart shuttle for tenants. There will also be restaurants on site, including a whiskey and bourbon bar on the ground floor and a Lebanese restaurant on the rooftop (promising a “resident DJ”).
Retirement savings provider Slavic 401k, NSI Insurance and coworking firm Industrious have already committed to the building. Space at Aletto is being marketed at $95 per square foot.
And it may not take another decade for the next Boca office project to follow.
Butters Construction & Development is already floating plans for Midtown Boca, a 120,000-square-foot office building with floor-to-ceiling glass windows, balconies on each of its five floors and a possible 2028 delivery.
The proposed project in central Boca is being marketed to prospective tenants ahead of construction, said Christina Stine Jolley, senior vice president at Blanca Commercial Real Estate, the firm handling leasing.
“There is room for more development,” said Susan Bands, managing director for CBRE in Palm Beach County. “There’s certainly intense demand for space in that Class A sector.”
