The $500 million plan to redevelop the Scioto Peninsula is closer to having a master developer. CDDC has winnowed the list of potential partners to four development teams, made up of 10 companies based from New York to Los Angeles.
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A four-story office building fronting on West Blue Mound Road in Brookfield sold last week for $10.6 million in a deal between two out-of-state investors.
The Executive Center VI building has 102,017 square feet at Executive Drive and Blue Mound Road, near Brookfield Square mall. An affiliate of Arthur Goldner & Associates Inc. bought the building for $10.6 million, according to a Monday announcement from Milwaukee real estate firm Colliers International/Wisconsin. Arthur Goldner, of Northbrook, Ill., previously owned the nearby Executive Center III office building.
"Due to all of the recent retail development activity, Brookfield has had a surge in demand for buyers seeking long-term investment properties,” said Tom Shepherd, partner in Colliers International/Wisconsin. "Commercial property values have historically held up well in this community, especially along Blue Mound Road.”
The Brookfield building is more than 95 percent occupied, according to a listing created in September and posted on the real estate website Loopnet. Willis Towers Watson is an anchor tenant, along with U.S. Bank and Neopost. Willis leased 26,000 square feet in the building in 2012 and moved about 110 employees there from Wauwatosa.
Shepherd and Dan Wroblewski of Colliers represented the seller, an affiliate of RAIT Financial Trust. The Philadelphia company acquired the Brookfield building in 2009. RAIT Financial also recently hired Colliers to list for sale its blue office building at 310 W. Wisconsin Ave. in downtown Milwaukee, which formerly was called the Henry S. Reuss Federal Plaza.
A former University of Miami director of finance pleaded guilty to tax evasion charges related to her failure to report $2.3 million she embezzled from the university, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida announced Wednesday.Kimberly Jean Miller pleaded guilty to four counts of tax evasion Tuesday, according to a court record. Her attorney could not be reached for comment.The University of Miami said in an email that it "does not comment on personnel matters."Miller was the director of finance at UM’s Virginia Key-based Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science between 2002 until 2012, according to a court document. In her former role, she used her position to embezzle $2.3 million from the university by falsifying invoices from vendor International Assets, according to a court document.The scheme centered on International Asset invoices. Miller altered the name on the invoices so checks would be written to “Inter, Inc.” and then be returned to RSMAS. Miller would then deposit the checks into a business bank account she opened in 1993 for Intercontinental Oceans Inc., according to a court document.Miller failed to report the funds from the embezzlement scheme to the Internal Revenue Service, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. An internal RSMAS audit revealed that Miller had embezzled about $2.3 million over the course of a decade.Her sentencing is scheduled for August. Miller was charged by information, which normally precedes a plea agreement, in March.
City of Miami commissioners approved an essential subsidy package on Monday night for the development of a downtown Miami convention center and hotel.
MDM Group is proposing a 600,000-square-foot expo center and 1,700-room hotel on the site of the old Miami Arena and within the footprint of the Miami Worldcenter development district. While the subsidies, a result of months of negotiations, are a step in the right direction for the developer, MDM is still looking to secure key milestones to move forward with construction.
For one, the developer wants to extend the life of the Southeast Overtown Park West Community Redevelopment Agency until 2042 to increase the value of the subsidies, the Miami Herald reported. It needs county approval to push the CRA’s end date from 2030, which would value MDM’s agreement at $50 million, to 2042.
MDM also wants to re-establish the “Global Agreement” from the mid-2000s that helped fund projects like the PortMiami Tunnel and Marlins Park, the Herald reported. The developer would need to collect 95 percent of its property taxes back through the agreement, Javier Fernandez, the firm’s attorney, told the newspaper.
In March, commissioners sent MDM back to the drawing board on its proposal, instructing the developer to offer stronger community benefits. Monday’s proposal includes higher wages, construction jobs earmarked for local residents and the funding of a culinary institute and other programs.
Plans for the Sea Vault boat slip condo project along the Miami River have been revamped with more slips and living quarters for yacht owners and crew.
The Miami River Commission’s Urban Infill & Greenways Subcommittee will meet on May 19 to consider the new plans for the 9.4-acre site at 1583 N.W. 24th Ave. In March 2015, the MRC supported the developer’s plan for 14 large boat slips and 14 living quarters, but the new plan would have 45 boat slips – with the sizes reduced – and 45 separate living quarters.
The property is owned by Brisas Del Rio, headed by Miami Beach developer Homero Meruelo.
“With the 14 slips, the pricing and the number of vessels out there was difficult,” Meruelo said. “The market is much larger for smaller vessels than what we had planned. We were looking at 200-foot vessels. Now we are looking at 100-foot vessels.”
Meruelo said the current boat slips at the property would be redeveloped to accommodate boats from 50 to 100 feet. It would sell the boat slips with crew quarters buildings of 3,000 square feet each. These three-story buildings could be configured for a combination of living space, office space or warehousing, he said. They would have full kitchens and bathrooms.
Sea Vault would also have a clubhouse, lounge, pool and tennis courts. It would be surrounded by locked gates to make it a private yacht club, Meruelo said.
Brisas Del Rio acquired the property for $7.5 million in 2003. The developer previously sought approval for a high-rise condo there but a legal challenge resulted in the area being restricted to mostly marine industry uses.
Meruelo said he has yet to select an architect Sea Vault
Brom Inmobiliaro, a real estate company that got its start in Mexico, just closed its $13 million purchase of a Hallandale Beach development site being eyed for a new office tower.
County records show a Brom affiliate picked up four parcels along Southeast 10th Street and at 1010 South Federal Highway, which straddles the line between Aventura and Hallandale Beach.
The contiguous parcels total about 1.74 acres and include two vacant lots, a preschool, parking lot and a basketball court
The sellers are a pair of companies name I & A Miami LLC and Star Holdings Management, which list their managing members as Aharon Vaknin and Raphael Ammar, respectively. They paid a combined $4 million, or $52 per square foot, to assemble the parcels between 2005 and 2006.
Star and I & A filed an application with Hallandale Beach in January to build Optima Plaza North, a new 28-story office tower with 269,556 square feet of space, a ground-floor bank location and 1,013 parking spaces.
Directly to the south, Brom Inmobiliaro has already built Optima Plaza South, a long eight-story building with 346,161 square feet located at 21550 Biscayne Boulevard.
According to its website, Brom Inmobiliaro was founded in Mexico City in 1972 and has since expanded its reach to South Florida. The firm has developed 10 condominium projects in Mexico, and currently has 970,000 square feet of office space under management.
Optima Plaza South was its most recent project outside of Mexico.
The real estate investing arm of Prudential Financial just paid a whopping $83 million for the 355 Alhambra office tower in downtown Coral Gables.
An affiliate of Prudential Real Estate Investors, which has an asset portfolio valued at $62.6 billion, purchased the 16-story tower through a deed filed Tuesday, according to Miami-Dade County records. The price breaks down to about $168 per square foot.
The seller is AEW Capital Management, an investment management firm that owned the building on behalf of institutional clients. Records show AEW paid $87.3 million for the building in 2008 — about $4.3 million more than its current price.
The tower, at 355 Alhambra Circle, was first built in 2001 and measures 492,820 square feet. A big portion of that square footage is located in the building’s multi-story parking garage, which affords three parking spaces per 1,000 square feet of rentable space, according to the building’s website. The remaining 224,241 square feet is divided into leasable offices. Tenants include Merrill Lynch, Moore & Co. and Spencer Stuart.
This is the second high-profile office purchase in the downtown Coral Gables area to close in December: two weeks ago, a Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management fund paid $119 million for the Alhambra office complex.
The EB-5 visa program, which is enormously popular with developers but criticized by some lawmakers as an unfair express route to U.S. citizenship for the wealthy, just got a five-day reprieve.
Renewal of the program – which awards a U.S. green card to foreigners who invest $500,000 into the U.S. economy – was part of a short-term spending bill approved by the House of Representatives Friday. The bill, approved by the Senate on Thursday, will keep the government running through Dec. 16 while lawmakers negotiate the $1.15 trillion budget, of which EB-5 is a small component.
The EB-5 program, which offers 10,000 U.S. visas annually and has been dominated by Chinese investors in recent years, was initially up for renewal in September, when lawmakers passed a stopgap measure to keep the government operating through Dec. 11.
In recent months, lawmakers have been considering various changes to the program, such as raising the minimum investment amount. Currently, investors are required to invest $1 million or a discounted amount of $500,000 in “targeted employment areas,” or zones designated as having high unemployment. Other changes could place restrictions on TEA designation.
The EB-5 legislation currently contains 40 pages of changes, according to Ron Klasko, a managing partner at Klasko Immigration Law Partners.
For New York developers, proposed changes to TEAs are particularly worrisome since many of them have taken advantage of the discounted investment amount by creating special districts linking their projects to low-income neighborhoods.
“From the point of view of New York developers, almost all of them have, in the past, qualified for the $500,000 reduced investment amount of the TEAs,” Klasko said. “Many of them will not qualify for that under this new law, meaning investors would have to invest $1 million. That’s an issue.”
The legislation would also allot a certain number of visas to different investment categories, such as 2,000 visas for projects in rural areas and 2,000 visas for people who invest $1 million.
“There have been long waiting lists for investors in China when they were competing for 10,000 visas,” Klasko said. “Now many of them for the New York projects will be competing for 4,000 visas.”
There’s little chance the bill will not pass, he said, since it’s part of the government’s omnibus bill. Meanwhile, developers and investors are sitting tight. “Until we have the final law,” said Klasko, “There won’t be a lot of activity.”
Paseo de la Riviera in Coral Gables is moving forward, but with buildings at a much lower height than the developer initially wanted.
After a three-hour deliberation Friday morning, Coral Gables commissioners unanimously approved a site plan and zoning changes for the controversial $172 million hotel, residential and retail development that will replace a 155-room Holiday Inn on U.S. 1 across the street from the University of Miami campus.
“It comes down to height and how we can control it,” said Coral Gables Vice Mayor Frank Quesada. “It is essential we deliver on that.”
The city commission’s vote will allow developer Brent Reynolds to build a Mediterranean-style complex set around a public plaza with a hotel capped at 126 feet and an apartment building with a height of 112 feet.
Originally, Reynolds sought approval for two 140-foot towers. Over the last two months, during contentious city commission meetings, commissioners pushed the developer to reduce the height of the buildings to allay concerns by residents who live to the east of the proposed project.
The city commission’s vote caps a whirlwind week for Reynolds, who near the end of a marathon meeting on Tuesday had told elected officials he would abandon his plans if he had to go through further delays, as well as more height reductions.
A large number of Coral Gables residents also expressed their objections to the project, claiming it will create traffic gridlock and open the door to more high-density, high-rise developments in the city. A homeowners group, the Riviera Neighborhood Association, had submitted a petition with more than 1,000 signatures against Paseo.
While Paseo cleared its biggest hurdle, the project still will have to be reevaluated by the city’s Board of Architects since the design has changed, said Coral Gables Planning and Zoning Director Ramon Trias.
Litigation blocking the multimillion-dollar sale of two properties on Lincoln Road could be nearing an end after a judge ruled in favor of the owner, Leon Zwick, in a three-year dispute with Michael Comras and his partners the Cayre family of New York. Yet, Comras and Cayre vow to appeal the judge’s decision, according to their attorney.
At issue are two buildings at 940 Lincoln Road and 947 Lincoln Road in Miami Beach, which Zwick and his late brother bought in 1984 and 1986. Current tenants include Finnegan’s and Timeless Cosmetics.
The deal
In October 2012, Zwick entered into a deal to sell 940 Lincoln and 947 Lincoln to an entity managed by Comras and the Cayre family — including Robert Cayre and his uncle Harry Adjami — according to legal documents.
Soaring property values on Lincoln Road
Just up the street this September, Comras and his partner Jonathan Fryd sold the entire block from 1001 to 1035 Lincoln Road to Spanish billionaire Amancio Ortega for $370 million, or $7,708 per square foot for the land and $4,933 per square foot for the buildings. The transaction marked one of the largest real estate deals in Miami-Dade history.
In the 2012 Comras and Cayre deal, the property at 947 Lincoln was to sell for $25 million and 940 Lincoln for $61 million, according to a 96-page deposition from Comras. That equates to about $3,822 per square foot for the land and an average of $1,911 per square foot for the buildings.
Miami-Dade property records show that back in the mid-’80s, the Zwick entity had paid $301,000 for 947 Lincoln Road and $585,000 for 940 Lincoln Road. The buildings, with 8,625 square feet and 36,377 square feet, were built in 1925 and 1926, respectively.
Deal to sell is derailed
On Dec. 19, 2012, nine days before the scheduled closing, Zwick’s sister, Bella Miller, sued both sides involved in the deal in an attempt to prevent the sale from closing, legal filings show. The notice of lis pendens claimed she had a right to the ownership of both properties.
At the same time, Comras and Cayre were becoming concerned that the seller was not complying with pre-closing obligations to remove existing tenants from the building, legal documents show.
On Dec. 28, 2012, the buyers exercised their right to terminate the contract and requested the return of deposits. Their attorney, Todd Legon, partner in Legon Fodiman, said they had been told that the seller could not go forward with the sale because of the sister’s suit, and that Zwick would re-enter into a contract once that issue was resolved. “It was an oral promise that they said we will redo the contracts,” Legon told us. Zwick’s attorney Michael Schlesinger said his client disputes that allegation.
Zwick agreed to the cancellation, and Comras and his partners received their deposits back: $5.5 million for 940 Lincoln and $2.3 million for 947 Lincoln, said Schlesinger, of Schlesinger & Associates, who is co-counsel along with William Davis of Foley & Lardner.
New buyer emerges
Zwick then entered into a separate contract to sell 947 Lincoln to the Richard Chera family, also of New York, Schlesinger said.
The deal was signed the day after the termination, but email correspondence shows it was arranged while Comras and Cayre’s deal was still pending and before it was terminated, in violation of exclusivity and “no shop” provisions, Legon said.
Litigation follows
According to Schlesinger, Comras and Cayre were upset with the pending sale, and sued Zwick in February 2013 in three different complaints. One stated that Zwick asked them to cancel and gave them an oral extension to buy the property for the same price in the future. Another said they had an option of first refusal to buy the property. And the third said they were fraudulently induced to cancel.
“We did not seek to enforce an oral promise,” Legon said. “What we were saying is that we were fraudulently induced to terminate the contracts.”
New deal in flux
Schlesinger told TRD that Chera is under contract with Zwick for 947, but “we can’t close until the case closes.” He declined to disclose the sale price. “We can’t transfer title. All the litigation is holding up the sale of the building.”
Zwick moved for summary judgment, and last month, Miami-Dade Circuit Court judge Migna Sanchez-Llorens granted it, except for one count of breach of contract. She also dissolved Zwick’s sister’s lis pendens, which had been dismissed by another court in November 2013 for lack of merit, and was affirmed on appeal.
The next chapter
“Now 947 is close to being sold to Chera, and 940 is closer to being free so Zwick can do what he wants with it,” Schlesinger told us. “They used the legal system to hold these buildings hostage for three years.”
Yet Legon said Comras and Cayre will “definitely” appeal.
“We’re disappointed with the court’s ruling, but this case is far from over. We have substantial damages claims for breach of contract that we intend to vigorously pursue,” Legon said, declining to provide a figure, “in addition to our appellate rights.”