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Neology Secures Construction Loan For Third Apartment Community In Miami’s Allapattah

Neology Life Development Group, led by Lissette Calderon, announced that it has secured construction financing to build its third lifestyle-driven residential community in Miami’s historic Allapattah neighborhood. Located at 1470 NW 36th Street, “Fourteen Allapattah Residences” will deliver 237 apartments, along with 5,000 square feet of ground-floor retail, to one of Miami’s most dynamic emerging neighborhoods.

Berkadia secured a $57.5 million construction loan through lender Churchill Real Estate to build Fourteen Allapattah Residences, with groundbreaking expected this September. The property is located in a Qualified Opportunity Zone.

Neology’s portfolio now consists of more than 1,500 apartment units completed or under construction in Miami’s urban core, including The Julia, an upscale apartment community that will open in 2023, and Neology’s flagship Allapattah project, No. 17 Residences Allapattah, which opened in 2021 and leased up in record time.

“Fourteen Allapattah Residences is an important milestone,” said, Lissette Calderon, President and CEO of Neology Life Development Group. “It further establishes Neology’s commitment to Allapattah as the pre-eminent multifamily developer in the neighborhood with over 1,000 apartments recently completed or under construction. It also demonstrates our partners’ confidence in our business model and track record. Everything about this project – from the Opportunity Zone location to the attainable lifestyle component – makes good financial sense in today’s market. It’s an exciting time for Allapattah as we add another one-of-a-kind residential space to one of Miami’s original neighborhoods.”

She added, “To be able to bring this project to life with my partner America Opportunity Zone Advisors, led by my mentor and former Wharton Professor and head of Wharton Real Estate, Peter Linneman, along with his team of Jared Mintz and Kelley Brasfield, is a dream come true.”

Fourteen Allapattah Residences will consist of a 14-story building with 180 apartment units connected via a pool deck to a five-story building with 57 apartments including ground floor walk ups. It will offer studio, one- and two-bedroom units ranging 450 to 900 square feet. Apartments will feature European-inspired cabinetry, quartz countertops, energy efficient kitchen appliances, in-unit washer and dryer, energy efficient AC and heating systems, and smart home technology adaptors. Lifestyle amenities will include curated original artwork, a multipurpose lobby, media lounges and living rooms, a rooftop pool and clubhouse, poolside cabanas, coworking spaces, conference rooms, outdoor movie screen, an indoor and outdoor fitness and wellness center, with a yoga and cardio studio, dog park with dog wash area, bike storage, virtual concierge and smart package lockers, and a parking garage with electric car charging stations as well as a ride share lobby.

The property, which will open in early 2024, enjoys a highly visible location on NW 36th Street just 5 minutes west of Wynwood and 10 minutes east of the Miami International Airport, close to the health district, which is the country’s largest concentration of medical and research facilities after Houston. It is just a short walk from the Allapattah Miami Metrorail Station, the Rubell Museum, and SuperBlue.

The contractor for Fourteen Allapattah Residences is JAXI Builders, Inc.; the architect is Behar Font Architects; interior design is by designBAR; and Witkin Hultz Design is the landscape architect and GT Law provided legal counsel. Bilzin Sumberg Law’s Suzanne Amaducci-Adams and Manny Gonzalez led the transaction on behalf of the borrower.

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Miami Area Expected To Add 19,000 Apartments In 2022

Developers are expected to complete 19,125 apartments in the Miami metro area in 2022, according to a new report by rentcafe.com.

Rentcafe also reported earlier this month that Miami remains the most competitive market in the U.S. for renters. In Miami, “the existing supply of rentals simply can’t keep up with sky-high demand,” the website said.

Just two other metro areas are expected to build more apartments than Miami this year: New York (28,153) and Dallas (23,571). By comparison, Miami ranked sixth nationwide in 2021.

The city of Miami itself will see the most new rental units in the metro area this year by far – nearly eight times more than second place Fort Lauderdale, the report said.

For apartments completed within Miami city limits in the first half of 2022, Miami ranked fourth nationwide with 2,996 units. Only Houston (4,746 completed apartments), Austin (4,236 completed apartments), and Seattle (3,232 completed apartments) ranked higher.

Miami’s land area is just 36 square miles, far less than Houston (640 square miles), Austin (320 square miles), and Seattle (84 square miles).

 

Source:  The Next Miami

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Miami Beach Voters Pass Referendums Approving More Density For Some, Less For Others

Residents of Miami Beach approved all six referendum questions on their primary ballot Tuesday, including a handful that will have an impact on development in the city.

The most impactful measure passed allows the developer of the Alton Road Gateway Project to increase the allowable density on its site.

Terra, which is replacing the community health center at 710 Alton Road, will be allowed to build to a 2.6 floor-area ratio, clearing the way for a roughly 15-story tower with about 120 units, office space and retail, Terra’s Russell Galbut told The Real Deal. In exchange for the allowable density — the site previously allowed 2.0 FAR — Terra has agreed to build a new health center and library across the street from its project.

A ballot measure that would force developers who are building in vacated city alleyways and side streets to get voter approval to increase their projects’ floor-area ratio also passed Tuesday night. Developers had previously been able to build denser projects than zoning allows by incorporating former city streets and alleys into their projects — they will now need to get a referendum approved to get that additional FAR.

“I was a bit disappointed, but not surprised,” that the FAR referendum passed, said Neisen Kasdin, a managing partner at law firm Akerman and a former mayor of Miami Beach. “I’ve always held the belief that the U.S. Constitution protects property owners’ rights to not be subject to popular vote.”

Another referendum passed that would allow developers to build denser residential projects if they convert properties zoned as apartment-hotels. The city voted to ban those types of properties last year, and now voters have approved an incentive for developers to convert those buildings to permanent housing.

“There is this idea that transient [developments] are viewed as disruptive,” Kasdin said. “This incentivizes developers from working on transient projects.”

Voters also approved adding a rule that the city’s Board of Adjustments, which hears land use and zoning cases, must have an architect among its seven members.

 

Source:  Bisnow

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Thor Equities Lists Wynwood Dev Site For $32M

Thor Equities is listing a Wynwood assemblage that’s primed for a hotel, retail and restaurant development. Asking price: $32 million.

The New York-based firm, led by Chairman Joe Sitt, retained Tony Arellano and Devlin Marinoff with DWNTN Realty Advisors to market the five contiguous empty parcels at 2724 Northwest Second Avenue, 208 Northwest 28th Street and 229, 235 and 245 Northwest 27th Street.

“It is the last remaining development site on that side of Second Avenue,” Marinoff said. “Four years ago, this site was in a desert. Now it’s come a long way.”

The 0.7-acre assemblage comes with development rights for an eight-story hotel with 211 rooms, 19,705 square feet of retail and a 12,106-square-foot rooftop terrace, according to the offering. Development site prices in downtown Miami and surrounding neighborhoods are skyrocketing, with buyers paying about $16 million an acre last year, according to Colliers.

“Retail rents on Second Avenue are north of $120 a square foot,” Marinoff said. “You get more than $30 million in value on just the retail.”

In 2014, a Thor affiliate bought the vacant lot at 2724 Northwest Second Avenue for $1.9 million, records show. A year later, The firm acquired the other four parcels as part of a $41.5 million deal for a larger assemblage that included a 100,000-square-foot site at 2800 Northwest Second Avenue that had been the headquarters for Lehman Pipe & Plumbing Supply for 68 years.

Thor redeveloped the Lehman Pipe property into Wynwood Walk, a 63,000-square-foot retail and restaurant complex that is adjacent to the vacant lots hitting the market, Marinoff said. The assemblage is also next door to the site that the Related Group, David Edelstein’s Tricap and Alex Karakhanian’s Lndmrk Development are co-developing into the NoMad Wynwood Residences condo-hotel. The partnership paid $26.5 million for the site at 2700 Northwest Second Avenue last year.

Marinoff said Thor had drawn up plans to develop its assemblage, but the company’s primary focus is retail and industrial, rather than hotels.

Thor is also looking to shed two Miami Design District properties the firm owns. In April, Thor listed the former U.S. Post Office building at 66-70 Northeast 39th Street for $80 million. And Last year, Thor put on the market a retail building currently leased to luxury retailer Stefano Ricci at 120 Northeast 39th Street. The asking price was not disclosed.

 

Source:  The Real Deal

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Longpoint Buys Shuttered Trailer Park In Allapattah

Industrial land is so scarce, a Boston-based developer picked up a former mobile home park in Miami’s Allapattah neighborhood for potential redevelopment.

An affiliate of Longpoint Realty Partners paid $16 million for a nearly 6-acre site at 2260 Northwest 27th Avenue, according to records. Formerly the River Park Trailer Court mobile home park, the property is near the Miami River and Miami International Airport.

Deme Mekras with MSP Group represented the seller, an entity with ties to North Miami real estate investor Israel Kopel. In 2009, The Kopel entity paid $2 million for the mobile home park that was completed in 1975, records show. Four remaining mobile home residents were evicted in June, court records show.

The property sold just below its asking price of $16.5 million, Mekras said. Longpoint did not respond to a request for comment, but Mekras said zoning allows the buyer to redevelop River Park into an industrial project.

In addition to the site’s size, River Park’s proximity to the airport, PortMiami and easy highway access made the property an attractive purchase for Longpoint, which specializes in the industrial sector, Mekras said.

Miami-Dade’s industrial sector is experiencing a land crunch, as inventory of developable land for new warehouses is diminishing across the county. A 2022 Commercial Industrial Association of South Florida (CIASF) outlook from earlier this year shows Miami-Dade has 1,300 acres left for potential industrial development that could run out in eight years.

As a result, warehouse builders are targeting potential redevelopment sites in Allapattah, Medley and other submarkets near the Airport West sector.

 

Source:  The Real Deal

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With Pricey Rents In Miami Beach, Developer Plans Cheaper Apartments For Local Workers

A new workforce housing project could help relieve some local residents from sky-high rents in Miami Beach, one of Miami-Dade County’s most expensive residential markets.

A boutique rental building with 60 apartments proposed for Normandy Isles neighborhood could give essential workers — think teachers, nurses, police officers and firefighters — more living options in line with their incomes. Alan Waserstein, owner of Miami Lakes investment and development firm LeaseFlorida, plans to build a four-story development called Mia, containing the 400-square-foot studio apartments and retail space on the ground floor, at 1960 Normandy Drive, according to plans filed to the city of Miami Beach’s Design Review Board.

Mia’s dwellers would have to earn between 60% and 140% of the area’s median income in order to qualify to live in the building, or between $50,820 and $118,580 annually for a family of four, according to Miami-Dade County’s Public Housing and Community Development Department. Renters could expect to pay between $683 and $2,390 a month based on their earnings and the latest income guidelines from Florida Housing Finance Corporation.

There’s a dire need for affordable and workforce housing across Miami-Dade County. The county’s home affordability crisis precedes the pandemic, but demand skyrocketed during the spread of COVID-19. Already accustomed to competing with foreigners for housing, local residents face competition for homes from an influx of wealthy digital nomads from across the country seeking refuge from strict pandemic restrictions, cold climates and high taxes.

The migration here has prompted landlords to boost rents so much that Mayor Daniella Levine Cava in April declared a state of emergency over the county’s housing crunch and budgeted over $40 million to help residents most struggling to pay rent. Waserstein, a Miami Beach native and resident, decided to build Mia to cater to the workforce housing demand. He’s built several residential projects — including 63 Nobe and the St. Tropez Condominium in Miami Beach — but this will be his first housing development priced for the local workforce. A neighborhood like Normandy Isles needs workforce housing given its proximity to employment hubs and growing business sectors.

“We started to notice the demand for workforce housing when the pandemic hit,” the developer said, noting a hotel his firm acquired during the ongoing pandemic and turned into an apartment building. “We got a lot of people — waiters, hotel workers, the workforce. We had a waiting list of people trying to rent our rooms. That’s when we noticed there was a big demand.”

Waserstein’s latest development proposal goes before Miami Beach’s Design Review Board in September. If approved, he plans to finalize design plans and secure building permits to replace the existing surface parking lot and small warehouses with the planned Mia apartment building. Construction and early leasing could start by mid-2023, and completion is targeted for late 2024.

 

Source:  Miami Herald

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Miami Beach Parking Lot Sells For $20M

A parking lot near some popular restaurants in the South of Fifth neighborhood of Miami Beach sold for $20 million in two deeds.

Kaine Parking 125 LLC, managed by Patricia M. Kaine in Miami, and the Lawrence F. Kaine Living Trust, with Patricia Kaine as trustee, sold the 26,000-square-foot parking lot at 125-151 Collins Ave. The buyer was 125 Collins LLC, managed by Miami-based attorney Brenden D. Soucy. The price equates to $769 a square foot.

The property is zoned multifamily, so it has development potential as well.

 

Source:  SFBJ

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Construction Permits Filed At High-Tech Lynq Wynwood Office Campus

A construction permit application has been submitted to Miami’s Building Department for the Lynq Wynwood office complex (formerly knows as Wyn on 5th).

The developers have previously said the project would be the most high-tech office campus in Miami.

The project consists of a north and south building  across the street from each other, both at 8-stories. The two buildings will have a combined 36,000 square feet of ground floor retail space, and 331,000 square feet of office space. Each building will also have an enclosed parking garage, with 370 spaces in the south garage and 265 spaces in the north garage.

According to a May press release, the developers secured the necessary approvals to proceed with construction of the buildings. The project was reviewed by the Wynwood Design Review Committee and the Urban Design Review Board in February and March.

The full construction permits are in pre-screening with Miami’s Building Department since July 22, meaning that the plan sheets have yet to be filed. The developer is opting to use a private reviewer to expedite the process, the permit shows.

Juneau Construction Company is listed as the contractor.

DERM records show that permits were also filed in late July for drainage wells at both the north and south tower construction sites.

RAL Development and TriStar Capital are the developers. Arquitectonica is the architect.

 

Source:  The Next Miami

 

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Miami-Dade Seeks Partners For Allapattah Redevelopment

Miami commissioners plan to issue an RFP for the city’s General Services Administration site at 1970 Northwest 13th Avenue and 1950 Northwest 12th Avenue in Allapattah.

The July decision to issue an RFP for that site came after Miami-based NR Investments made an unsolicited proposal to develop a mixed-use complex there with a hotel, offices, retail and multifamily, with some workforce housing. Upon accepting that plan, commissioners had to allow other developers to submit their own proposals for the site.

Miami-Dade is also calling on developers to overhaul the county’s Government Center headquarters in what could be one of South Florida’s biggest public-private ventures.

The county is seeking proposals for the 17-acre site, which includes the commissioners’ chambers and county administrative offices at 111 Northwest First Street. The property has 1.1 million square feet of government buildings, public parking and some retail, according to a request for proposals issued Tuesday.

The RFP allows for the construction of between 17 million and 23 million square feet of real estate. That does not include the government buildings, but the solicitation leaves the door open for some of those to be rebuilt.

Miami-Dade has given broad guidelines for its vision for the site, though it has emphasized the need for mixed-income housing by calling for high-rises to include both affordable and workforce housing. The RFP allows for a mix of uses such as hospitality, retail and educational facilities.

The county has set some thresholds for its own facilities, likely in case developers propose replacing the existing government buildings.

It wants to ensure that there will be 36,000 square feet for commissioners’ offices and conference rooms; 7,300 square feet for the chambers; 60,000 square feet of offices for the parks department’s headquarters; a cultural campus where HistoryMiami Museum and the existing downtown library will be included; a day care; 45,000 square feet for recreation and wellness space; and 2,000 county-operated public parking spaces, according to the RFP.

The development site is connected to Government Center station, one of Miami’s main transportation hubs where the Metrorail, Metromover and county buses stop. As such, the RFP calls for an intermodal terminal that connects to the station. The site is also walking distance from Brightline’s MiamiCentral station.

On a preliminary basis, the county is eyeing a 99-year agreement with the developer that submits the winning proposal.

The entire site spans 11 properties, including the Hickman office building at 275 Northwest Second Street; a portion of the Cultural Plaza, which includes HistoryMiami, at 20 Northwest First Avenue; the parking lot at the Children’s Courthouse at 155 Northwest Third Street; and county fleet parking locations at 120 and 150 Northwest Second Avenue.

Government Center, which actually spans 28 acres, includes three properties that were carved out from the RFP. They are the old, historically designated civil courthouse at 73 West Flagler Street; the site where the new courthouse is being developed at 101 West Flagler Street; and the North River Towers at 395 Northwest First Street and 24 Northwest North River Drive, which is subject to a separate county RFP.

 

Source:  The Real Deal

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Studies Completed For Miami Beach Rapid Transit, People Mover To Design District

Miami-Dade has completed an environmental study for a rapid transit connection between downtown Miami and Miami Beach.

The Draft Environmental Assessment is required in order to satisfy the National Environmental Policy Act.

The study covers the Beach Corridor Trunkline from the existing Metromover system in Downtown Miami to 5th Street and Washington Avenue in the City of Miami Beach.

Separately, the county has completed the Draft Categorical Exclusion (DCE) document for the Miami Design District Extension.

A DCE was assumed as the NEPA document for the Design District extension, but additional studies will now be required to complete the NEPA process in 2023, the county says.

The county will hold a public meeting on the Beach Corridor on August 9.

Current plans are for a monorail system to Miami Beach, and a Metromover-type system to the Design District.

To view the studies, click here.

For more details on the August 9 meeting, click here.

 

Source:  The Next Miami

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