December 2021 | FIP Commercial

Dec 29 No Comments

CRE Values, Yields Forecasted To Increase Next Year

Author: Admin

Categories: Commercial News

Experts are doing more than wishing the commercial real estate industry a prosperous New Year—they are promising it.

In a recent 2022 outlook webinar from Green Street, Michael Knott estimated that commercial real estate values and yields would increase next year. Values are expected to increase 11%, while yields will average 6%, according to his research.

On the value side, self-storage, industrial, retail and apartment values are going to be up the most. The reason for the boost in values is simple: real estate is cheap compared to the corporate bond market, and it is attracting a lot of attention and capital. The competition is driving asset pricing. According to Knott, the analysis compares real estate returns to corporate bonds, which are 22% higher that commercial real estate assets.

“That is a very bullish signal for commercial real estate in our analysis,” Knott, managing director and head of US REIT research at Green Street, said in the webinar, adding that the analysis also considers REIT pricing. “The REIT signal, which we think is typically predicative of changes in private market values. So, the REIT signal is much more sanguine. When we blend those two indicators, we come up with a roughly 10% higher real estate value.”

This isn’t a new trend. Real estate values have appreciated rapidly in 2021, and that momentum is carrying into 2022.

“We have all experienced a lot of real estate value appreciation in 2021. It is a buoyant time for commercial real estate values, and we expect that to continue,” said Knott.

In terms of the fast appreciating sectors, they are the usual suspects: single-family rentals, industrial and manufactured housing, which Knott said has been a favorite for a long time and the outlook is still positive. Self-storage is also at the top of the list.

“Self-storage has had an unbelievable run in terms of move-in rents, market rent and NOI growth,” he added.

At the bottom of the list is also the typical line-up, including office, malls and lodging.

The increase in asset pricing will deliver a 6% unlevered return to investors, on average.

“The important thing about this analysis is that the expected returns for commercial real estate are forward looking over the last 35 years. That gives some really valuable insight into what the spread is between expected returns at any given time and bond yields prevailing at the time,” explains Knott.

At the end of his forecast, he noted that commercial real estate generally acts as a solid hedge against inflation. “If inflation picks up, commercial real estate should do okay,” he said. “If it doesn’t real estate is still cheap compared to prevailing bond yields, so it feels like a favorable spot for commercial real estate.”

Source: GlobeSt.

Dec 27 No Comments

Miami Tech And Financial Sectors Spark Economic Gain

Author: Admin

Categories: Commercial News,Leasing,Trends

Strong population growth, declining unemployment, a slow but steady increase in the population’s GDP and the thriving technology and financial sector in South Florida are the main drivers of the area’s economic growth after the lows of pandemic.

According to the Bureau of Workforce Statistics and Economic Research of the State of Florida, unemployment rate was 4.6% last October with 8,902,400 nonagricultural jobs, a 0.2% recovery from September and a 1.2% recovery from last year. The Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall area was at 3.8% of unemployment, according to the preliminary data, a 6.2% change from last year.

In terms of GDP, Florida was expected to grow 2.5% in the 2019-2020 fiscal year but declined 4.3% in the first quarter of 2020 and 30.1% in the second quarter, according to the Florida Legislature Office of Economic and Demographic Research, published last August. After 2020’s third quarter, Florida GDP rebounded by 33.4%, as people returned to work, and the year ended with a 3.1% growth it the state’s GDP.

South Florida represented a third of the state’s GDP, and Miami-Dade County represents 15.74%, being the “state’s hardest hit county by most metrics,” according to the report.

Mark Vitner, managing director and senior economist at Wells Fargo, said Florida’s economy is rebounding very strongly. “The pandemic brought the long expansion that we had in the prior decade to an end, but in Florida the contraction was relatively short,” he said. “We saw economic activity decline for two months, it felt very sharply, but then it came back really quickly.”

The first quarter of 2021 brought Florida a 7% increase in GDP, ranking 15th in the nation in GDP.

“The output of the economy has recovered faster than employment has because we haven’t added back all the jobs in restaurants and bars and entertainment venues, in care salons and nursing home and childcare centers…,” Mr. Vitner said. “Almost all of those industries employ large number of part-time workers, and the pay is relatively low in many of the occupations in those industries, and they haven’t come back.”

“But the technology sector has been booming,” he added. “A lot of it has been in South Florida, but also in Tampa, in Saint Petersburg, in Orlando, in Jacksonville. We’ve seen a lot of financial services companies; hedge funds, private equity firms and many managers have relocated.”

A press release from the state of Florida in October said the state had gained 72,700 private-sector jobs in businesses over that month. Florida’s private-sector employment increased 5.6%, with 411,400 jobs, over the last year.

Business services added 10,400 new jobs and the hospitality industry added 26,600 new jobs in October, the press release said. According to the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity, there is an 11.2% increase in real estate jobs from the last year.

“The financial sector is well above where it was prior to the pandemic, as well as the tech industries,” Mr. Vitner said. “We had strong job growth in July and August, and a spectacular summer in tourism, the strongest it’s ever been.”

Nonetheless, many people across the country have chosen to retire early rather than go back to work after the post-pandemic era, Mr. Vitner said.

“This is seen particularly among persons over 55, with the stock market as strong as it’s been. Many of those folks have opted to move to Florida and they’re semi-retiring; they’re looking for a next act.”

Florida’s growth in population has mostly come from net migration, according to a Florida Economic Overview report by the Florida Legislature Office of Economic and Demographic Research. “Florida’s population growth of 387,479 between April 1, 2019, and April 1, 2020, was the strongest annual increase since 2005, immediately prior to the collapse of the housing market and the beginning of the Great Recession,” the report said.

In addition, homeownership during last year was at 68.7%, according to the same report. In 2021, it went down to 68.1% for the first quarter and 67% for the second quarter.

“We’ve had, with the economy recovering, drops and then very strong pick-ups in the housing [market],” said Mr. Vitner. “Apartments, particularly in downtown Miami, saw vacancy rates rise during the pandemic as people didn’t want to spend a lot of money to be in a small apartment when they couldn’t get out and about.”

“As the economy reopened, we saw demand revise and we’ve seen vacancies rates come down sharply and rents rise sharply,” he continued. “And there is a lot of apartment construction – not so much condo construction – going on.”

The single-family market concerns him, he said. “We’ve seen a lot of folks buying properties and converting them into single-family rentals and that’s restricting the supply of homes for sale. It really has a compounding effect, because typically someone buys a house and stays there for 7 or 10 years, then sells it and moves to another house. But when these homes get converted into rentals it reduces the pool of homes that are going to be recycled through over time.”

“So right now,” he concluded, “it seems like inventories have been persistently half of where they were in prior cycles.”

Source: Miami Today

Dec 24 No Comments

What Secondary Asset Classes Will Be Popular With Investors In 2022?

Author: Admin

Categories: Commercial News,Development,Healthcare,Trends

The four major “food groups” of commercial real estate — office, multifamily, industrial and retail — occupy most of the headlines around investment and development.

Another one, life sciences, is becoming a mainstream real estate class of its own, given its dominance in markets like Boston, San Diego and the Bay Area. But the Covid-19 pandemic has also diverted investors’ attention and investment into more niche, but downturn-proof, real estate sectors.

“There’s a continued chase for yield, where investors are trying to uncover stability and trying to create and capture predictability of income streams,” said Aaron Jodka, director of U.S. capital markets research at Colliers International Group Inc. (NASDAQ: CIGI). “That has led to growth in areas such as self storage, single-family rental and medical office.”

Here are some of the non-mainstream asset classes seeing renewed interest from capital sources, in 2021 and heading into next year.

Cold storage
Although still a specialized subsector of the broader industrial market, cold storage real estate is heating up in direct response to pandemic-induced trends.

Additionally, much of the nation’s refrigerated and freezer inventory is outdated or even obsolete, propelling — for the first time in awhile — speculative cold-storage development.

Self storage
The pandemic started with the self-storage sector actually oversupplied. Developers had, in the years leading up to 2020, been developing self-storage facilities at a rapid clip, which led to double-digit vacancy in some markets.

But shortly after the onset of Covid-19 in March 2020, lease-ups of storage units started to occur.

Medical office
Another generationally-driven commercial real estate subsector: medical office. The space saw some loss of momentum in 2020 as elective medical procedures were put on hold but has started to come back this year.

In 2020, medical-office building sales fell by 12.7%, according to CBRE Group Inc. (NYSE: CBRE) research from April. But, CBRE noted, the medical office sector came back quicker than other property types during the global financial crisis.

Data centers
A recent investor survey conducted by Colliers International found investors are bullish on two alternative, or specialty, property types more than any other: life sciences and data centers.

Global capital sources are flocking to data centers as connectivity and infrastructure have become more paramount through the Covid-19 pandemic, Jodka said. In the first half of 2021, data-center absorption in the United States was 273.6 megawatts across 13 markets, according to Jones Lang Lasalle Inc. (NYSE: JLL) research.

Construction is ramping up, too, from 611.8 megawatts at the end of 2020 to 680.8 megawatts in the first half of 2021.

Click here to read more about this story.

Dec 22 No Comments

Black Lion’s South Florida Retail Shopping Spree Continues With $19M South Beach Deal

Author: Admin

Categories: Commercial News,Miami Beach,Retail,Wynwood

In a $19 million deal, Black Lion Investment Group purchased its fourth Miami-Dade retail site in a six-month span.

The Los Angeles-based commercial real estate investment firm picked up the ground-floor commercial condos in Marea, a six-story boutique condominium at 801 South Pointe Drive in Miami Beach’s South of Fifth neighborhood, according to a press release. Black Lion, led by Robert Rivani, paid roughly $995 a square foot for 19,100 square feet of retail.

The seller is Marea Retails, an entity managed by Domenico Albano and Americo D’Agostini, principals of Miami-based A&D Group Realty. Marea Retails sold the two commercial units for the same price the company paid in 2015, when developer The Related Group completed the building. The project’s 30 condos atop the commercial space were sold to individual owners.

D’Agostini called the off-market trade with Black Lion “a good deal.” Fabio Faerman and Sebastian Faerman of FA Commercial brokered the sale.

Existing commercial tenants include RED Steakhouse and KoSushi. In a statement, Rivani said Black Lion plans to lease about 9,400 of available space to other fine dining restaurants. Marea is about a five minute walk from the Yukon building where celebrity chef Gordan Ramsey is opening a Lucky Cat restaurant.

Since June, Black Lion has dropped a total of $57.9 million to acquire retail spaces in Miami and Miami Beach, including the two Marea commercial units. The company first acquired Wynwood Arcade, a nearly 23,000-square-foot retail and restaurant building in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood for $13.3 million. The revamped warehouse is home to Salty Donut craft doughnut and coffee shop, and No. 3 Social rooftop lounge.

Also in June, Black Lion paid $12.1 million for Amara, a 12,300-square-foot restaurant operated by Michael Schwartz in Paraiso, another condo project by the Related Group in Miami’s Edgewater neighborhood.

In July, Black Lion bought a retail condo at the SLS Lux Brickell in Miami for $13.5 million. The space formerly housed Katsuya sushi restaurant and SBar.

Source: The Real Deal

Dec 20 No Comments

Miami Positioned As Blockchain City Of The World

Author: Admin

Categories: Commercial News,Trends

Miami is very well positioned to be the blockchain city of the world, experts are saying, as an influx of talented people in the blockchain technology industry are choosing the city to develop their businesses and create a crypto-enthusiastic community.

The Miami-Dade County Cryptocurrency Taskforce, created May 4 by the county commission, is studying potential policies and ways the county could implement cryptocurrency as forms of payment for taxes, fees and services.

Samir Suresh Patel, associate lawyer for Holland & Knight and a taskforce appointee by Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, says that what is attracting a great number of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to invest in blockchain technology in Miami is that the area can offer a better lifestyle than any other city.

“The blockchain community is a young, vibrant kind of movement,” said Mr. Patel. “There is an incredible amount of energy that is being harnessed here in Miami and put towards the effort of creating a blockchain community.”

Blockchain.com CEO Peter Smith announced last June that the company would be moving its headquarters from New York to Miami.

“We already have more employees in Miami than we do in New York,” he said in an interview in June. “In Miami there is a focus of the government to build a tech economy and to put crypto at the center of that and, at the end of the day, we want to be where the energy is, where the excitement is.”

Mr. Smith said the company would plan to hire 100 employees over the next year and 300 over the next couple of years.

“Because most of these people are entrepreneurs, and block and software developers, and very experienced and well versed in blockchain technology,” said Mr. Patel, “not only they want to conduct their profitable business here, but they also want to give back to the community and build that blockchain infrastructure, where citizens and constituents of Miami-Dade County and the city of Miami can benefit from the inventions that blockchain can provide.”

City of Miami Mayor Francis Suarez has strongly advocated to integrate cryptocurrency into the government infrastructure and to create a “cryptocurrency innovation hub” in the city, to incentivize citizens and merchants to adopt this technology.

On Nov. 2, Mayor Suarez tweeted that he would accept his next paycheck in Bitcoin. While those initiatives have not yet taken place, his efforts move ahead plans to integrate cryptocurrency into the city government.

“County politicians and city politicians have become more vocal in inviting these enterprises and these people into the city,” said Mr. Patel. “We are seeing this mass influx of talent and money, involved in blockchain technology.”

Mr. Patel also said that many residents have attended meetings of the Miami-Dade Cryptocurrency Task Force expressing interest and sharing independent projects.

“The enthusiasm that started with venture capitalists,” he said, “has certainly trickled down to actual community constituents.”

CityCoin, a non-profit and open-source electronic wallet that allows people to hold and trade cryptocurrency representing a city’s stake, introduced a MiamiCoin last August.

According to its website, traders in the community “mine” MiamiCoins by “forwarding STX tokens (Stacks tokens) into a smart contract in a given Stacks block.” Miners would keep 70% of the rewards – as they stack them – while the remaining 30% is sent to the wallet of the City of Miami in STX for them to convert it into US dollars.

The MiamiCoin protocol has sent about $7.1 million to the City of Miami, the Washington Post reported. Although the city has not adopted the protocol yet, city commissioners agreed on Sept. 13 to accept the donations. In the past three months, the report said, it has reached a total amount mined of $21 million.

“If it were to become part of the fabric of the blockchain ecosystem that is here in Miami-Dade County,” Mr. Patel said, “it would certainly be something that has not been replicated anywhere else in the world. There is not a city or a county that has its own cryptocurrency that is being transacted within its constituents.”

“There are still legal and political due diligence that needs to be done, when it comes to accepting city taxes or other kind of city payments in cryptocurrency,” he added. “I do think that the City of Miami is operating very strategically and very carefully, and rightfully so.”
The blockchain community is endlessly searching for legitimacy, he also said, “and one of tell-tale sign of legitimacy is having the support of politicians, whether that be senators in Washington, governors in states or mayors of local municipalities.”

Alex Lemberg, the CEO of Nimbus Platform, a decentralized finance company that provides 16 revenue streams for traders and recipients of cryptocurrency, said more people and institutions are realizing the real scope of the transformation these innovations create.

“Decentralized finance (DeFi) extends this transformation to existing and new financial products and services with the same security and protections traditional financial institutions offer,” he said in an email. “It provides full transparency and offers the advantages of decentralization, such as eliminating intermediaries and hidden fees.”

According to Mr. Patel, it is actually very difficult to create a decentralized autonomous organization legally, “but it’s like any kind of invention, as blockchain technology has shown, it takes a little bit of time in order to get acceptance by society.”

DeFi, he explained, is a bank operating on the blockchain; a series of smart contracts – computer codes without human intervention – which, in conjunction with each other, provide bank services.

“One of the big things that I’m waiting to see,” he said, “is a way to improve the infrastructure within cities, like laying down high-fiber optic cabling in order to handle massive amounts of blockchain technology information flowing from one end to another. Having a microscope on Miami would certainly be something that can be extrapolated to the greater world.”

Source: Miami Today

Dec 19 No Comments

Recently Renovated Miami Beach Office Building Sells For $26.5M

Author: Admin

Categories: Commercial News,Miami Beach,Offices

Integra Investments and Constellation Group turned a nice profit on a recently renovated office building in Miami Beach.

The 31,979-square-foot office at 1674 Meridian Ave. sold for $26.5 million.

The seller was 1674 Meridian Ventures LLC, a partnership between Miami-based Integra and Miami-based Constellation, and the buyer was a company led by Juan Jose Zaragoza of Miami-based Exan Capital. The price equated to $829 a square foot.

The building is 55% leased.

The developers acquired the building for $10.1 million in 2019 and performed a major renovation, creating more modern floor plates with spaces for collaboration, enhancing the façade, installing a new HVAC system, touchless elevators and face temperature camera telecoms.

The 5-story building was constructed on the 8,250-square-foot lot in 1959.

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Dec 16 No Comments

Looming Tax Break Deadline Is Spurring Last-Minute South Florida Real Estate Deals

Author: Admin

Categories: Allapattah,Aventura,Commercial News,Development,Healthcare,Miami Beach,Multifamily,Offices,Retail,Wynwood

Time is running out for investors in South Florida seeking a tax break by investing in opportunity zones, which allows for investments in lower-income areas to have tax advantages.

The rush is fueling deals as the population continues to grow due to continued migration to South Florida. Developers hope to get deferred taxable gains on projects such as new hotels, branded residential properties and more.

Dec. 31 is the deadline for individual investors seeking qualified opportunity zone investments to help defer taxable gains. Tax benefits in the program include a 10% basis step-up and related gain exclusion. If investors take advantage of the opportunity, they can defer paying capital gains on their investment until Dec. 31, 2026.

Besides the temporary deferral, other advantages include the exclusion of taxable income on new gains on investments held for 10 years or more, and a 10% increase in the investment if the qualified opportunity fund is retained for five years and a 15% increase if the investment is held for seven years.

After the December 31 deadline, the investors have until June 30, 2022, to invest the funds in businesses located in an opportunity zone to comply with the regulations. If they’re not, there’s a small penalty regarding the interest cost.

There are about 8,700 opportunity zones in the country with 123 opportunity zones in South Florida. Miami-Dade has 67, Broward has 30, and Palm Beach County has 26.

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Dec 13 No Comments

Sellers Will Take Cryptocurrency For Miami Beach Properties

Author: Admin

Categories: Commercial News,Miami Beach,Offices,Retail,Trends

Developer Scott Robins and his partner, former Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine, are accepting cryptocurrency for two properties they’re selling on South Beach’s Alton Road corridor.

Robins’ son Jared, founder of Miami Beach-based brokerage InHouse Commercial, said he’s partnering with FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange based in the Bahamas that purchased the naming rights of the former AmericanAirlines Arena in March and has an office in Brickell.

One of the properties for sale is the two-story Royal Media building and the adjacent one-story Reebok CrossFit Miami Beach studio.

The partners are seeking $25 million for the 23,810-square-foot Royal Media building, which was constructed at 960 Alton Road in 1975, and the 7,500-square-foot Reebok CrossFit studio, built at 930 Alton Road in 1948. Media Holdings Ltd. paid $1.6 million for 960 Alton Road in April 1996, and Media Holdings 930 LLC paid $1.42 million for 930 Alton Road in June 2010.

Since the Miami Beach City Commission increased the height limit to 75 feet, the property has development rights for a new 46,965-square-foot building, according to a brochure produced by InHouse Commercial.

The partners are asking $19 million for a three-story, Arquitectonica-designed retail complex built in 2014 at 1000 17th St. 17th St. Partners LLC bought the 8,000-square-foot lot the building stands on for $1.47 million in June 2007.

Jared Robins said the building is 81% leased, and the asking rent is $80 a square foot.

Cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, tend to swing widely in value. But Jared Robins said FTX’s ability to instantly exchange crypto into cash “really de-risks that whole aspect of it.”

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Dec 08 No Comments

THesis Miami Raises $33M From Retail Investors With Plan to Tokenize

Author: Admin

Categories: Commercial News,Multifamily,Retail

Nolan Reynolds International (NRI) has recapitalized THesis Miami, a mixed-use property in Coral Gables, that opened last fall, with $32.7 million from retail investors, in a bid to become the first property in Miami to be tokenized.

Pending approval, retail investors will be able to trade shares in the property, backed by a cryptocurrency issued by NRI after a six-month lockup period.

The equity, raised through the CrowdStreet platform, is part of a broader recapitalization for the property, which includes a total of $150 million in debt from Starwood Property Trust and around $95 million in equity.

THesis, located at 1340 S Dixie Hwy, includes residential, hotel and retail components across its 777,000 square feet. The Residences at THesis, the 204-unit residential portion, is 99 percent leased, while the 295-key THesis Miami Hotel and retail portions are on the path to stabilization, according to the CrowdStreet offering.

NRI plans to tokenize the property, allowing retail investors to trade shares backed by digital coins throughout the investment’s lifetime, thus introducing liquidity into real estate, a traditionally illiquid vehicle. If everything goes according to plan, NRI will register its operating partnership as a real estate investment trust, and, after a six-month lockup, existing investors can exchange their traditional shares for digital shares — represented by a digital coin — in the real estate investment trust.

Approximately 700 investors participated in the offering, which started at a minimum of $25,000, offering a greater shot at liquidity should the secondary market become possible. For those who choose the traditional setup, the investment period is expected to be five years.

While NRI has structured the investment to allow for tokenization through the REIT, it has yet to be approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission

Starwood Property Trust provided the $150 million in debt, while NRI contributed $17 million in equity. The remaining equity in the capital stack will be raised from private placement, according to the offering.

Source: Commercial Observer

Dec 07 No Comments

Miami Board Denies Wynwood Station Mixed-Use Project

Author: Admin

Categories: Commercial News,Development,Multifamily,Wynwood

A mixed-use residential project planned for the east side of the Wynwood Arts District, near Midtown and Edgewater, was denied by the City of Miami’s Urban Development Review Board.

Developer-owner Newcomb Properties #2 LLC plans to build Wynwood Station at 45 NE 27th St.

But the board voted unanimously Nov. 17 to deny the project, after voicing numerous concerns including the massing of the building, location of a trash chute, location of elevators, design of the parking levels and ramps, the width of a covered walkway, the size of a courtyard and more.
Board member Ignacio Permuy said of the project, “It’s a good start but it’s just not there yet.”

Total size of the floor area for Wynwood Station is 331,846 square feet.

The planned eight-story building would be home to 210 dwellings, 11,152 square feet of commercial-retail uses, and parking for up to 283 vehicles in an adjacent screened garage.

The development site is on Northeast 27th Street, south of Northeast 28th Street and east of North Miami Avenue. The contiguous mid-block site is in the northeast quadrant of Wynwood, near the Florida East Coast Railway line.

The applicant is FRC Realty Inc., represented by attorney Steve Wernick.

In a letter to the city, he said the plan is “to redevelop this former industrial yard into a mixed-use multi-family residential project that will activate NE 27th Street and contribute to the ongoing transformation of Wynwood into a 24/7 mixed use walkable neighborhood.”

The project was designed by MSA Architects Inc.

Zoning allows up to five stories by right and eight stories with bonus height. A future land use designation permits a wide range of residential and non-residential uses up to 150 units per acre across the properties, Mr. Wernick said.

“The property is a sprawling industrial yard and currently used as a Sunbelt construction equipment rental and storage facility. The existing conditions impose a hard-edge intent on bufferingthe site from the public realm and pedestrians on the sidewalk. It is a site that is quite reminiscent of Wynwood’s former self as an industrial warehouse district, with few trees or shade from the elements,” he said.

Mr. Wernick wrote, “NE 27th Street is a unique street as the link between Wynwood & Edgewater and thus acts as an eastern gateway into the arts district planned for greater pedestrian orientation in the Wynwood Streetscape Master Plan.

“NE 28th Street in its current condition functions as an oversized industrial alley, with little to no right of way improvements and much narrower than a standard right of way in Wynwood,” he said.

Mr. Wernick said the project gives considerable attention to the public realm in the area, including introducing a cross-block paseo connection that will provide much greater mobility and accessibility.

“With the required right of way dedication contemplated with the project, the project will greatly improve and activate NE 28th Street,” he said.

The property is also steps from the intersection of Northeast 27th Street and the FEC Northeast Corridor, the anticipated location for a future commuter rail station that has not yet been approved.

Mr. Wernick said FRC Realty Inc. is an affiliate of Fifield Holdings. Founded in 1977 by Steven Fifield and headquartered in Chicago, Fifield is a national real estate developer with expertise in land acquisition, structured finance, construction management, architecture and design, and asset management.

Over the past four decades, Fifield has developed more than 13,000 residential units and 8.7 million square feet of commercial projects – in markets from Chicago to Los Angeles.

Mr. Wernick noted that the developer had already presented the plan to the Wynwood Design Review Committee and the plan they were showing the city’s review board “has changed significantly” based on comments from the Wynwood committee.

Review board members questioned why the developer’s team would go before the city board before making a planned return before the Wynwood committee.

And some board members said they preferred the look of the planned building seen in earlier renderings, before the changes.

Board Chair Willy Bermello said, “I don’t think you’ve improved this at all … It’s a big building with no statement as to its entrance.

“I’d also like to see what you did the first time. I’m not impressed with what you currently have,” he said.

Board member Anthony Tzamtzis said, “I have many issues with the building, so many I don’t know where to start from.”

Board member Neil Hall said, “I would have loved to see the first design that you did, and which caused you to rework the entire scheme. The scheme presented here today, I’m not in tune with it. I’m getting no positive vibe. I would have liked for us to have the opportunity to react to the first one.”

Mr. Wernick responded, “We feel a little like a ping-pong ball,” and that scheduling issues complicated matters.

After the board voted to recommend denial, Mr. Bermello said hopefully the board would see the developer back with a refined plan, after again meeting with the Wynwood Design Review Committee and continuing to work with city staff.

Source: Miami Today

Blog

Month: <span>December 2021</span>

CRE Values, Yields Forecasted To Increase Next Year

Miami Tech And Financial Sectors Spark Economic Gain

What Secondary Asset Classes Will Be Popular With Investors In 2022?

Miami Positioned As Blockchain City Of The World

Recently Renovated Miami Beach Office Building Sells For $26.5M

Looming Tax Break Deadline Is Spurring Last-Minute South Florida Real Estate Deals

Sellers Will Take Cryptocurrency For Miami Beach Properties

THesis Miami Raises $33M From Retail Investors With Plan to Tokenize

Miami Board Denies Wynwood Station Mixed-Use Project

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