Developers are counting on demand to be strong for co-living apartments in Wynwood, offering lower rents, shared common areas and amenities geared to promote face-to-face interactions among residents.
“There is a real vibe in these buildings,” said Swiss real estate developer Ralph Winter, whose company, W5 Group, is developing a Wynwood co-living project with the Related Group. “It is very comparable to student housing except here you have people coming from all over the world [as roommates]. They really like it.”
Winter joined Alberto Milo Jr., president of Related’s affordable housing division, and Greg West, CEO of ZOM Living, for a panel discussion on the latest trends in multifamily development at the Urban Land Institute’s Housing Opportunity Conference on Monday. Ron Terwilliger, chairman of Terwilliger Pappas Multifamily Properties, was the moderator.
Winter said his project with Related, called w28 and designed by Arquitectonica, will likely take two-and-a-half years to complete. As the lead equity partner, W5 Group is providing 80 percent of the capital to build w28. The project will have 200 co-living apartments and 3,600 square feet of ground-floor retail. The development is set to rise at 33, 45, and 51 Northwest 28th Street, three parcels Related bought for $6.5 million in June.
Apartments at w28 will be fully-furnished, have shared common areas and include streaming services such as Netflix — features that appeal to millennials, Winter said. He said kitchens are designed to encourage interactions between an apartment’s tenants, such as drinking beer on a dining counter.
“This is more of a prime concept to bring people together,” Winter said. “We have seen in our research that the loneliness factor for a 25-year-old is much higher than for a 65-year-old. [Because of smartphones] they are not really connected in a face-to-face manner. That is what we try to do in these buildings.”
Winter said a co-living tenant can expect to pay 15 percent less than the average monthly rent for a studio. However, a room in a co-living apartment averages 140 square feet, he noted. Winter explained co-living apartments are attractive to young professionals who may not stay rooted in one city or often travel for long periods of time for their jobs.
“We have guys from Google and Apple who could easily pay $3,000 a month for an apartment,” Winter said. “You are paying to be part of a membership, an exclusive circle….They say, ‘Oh that is a cool place, and I want to be a part of it.”’
On the flip side of the demographic spectrum, demand for luxury apartment buildings geared to senior citizens is booming, according to ZOM Living’s West. His company is developing the Watermark at Merrick Park in Coral Gables and the Watermark at West Palm Beach, two mid-rise multifamily projects strictly for people near retirement age.
West said senior housing monthly rents can produce about an 8 percent yield compared to the typical 6 percent yield of regular apartment buildings.
“The exit [rate of return is] higher than conventional multifamily,” he said. “We’d sell apartments in the 4 [percent range]. In senior housing, you will sell at 6 [percent].”
However, multifamily owners have to employ more people to provide property management services. And achieving full occupancy takes longer in senior living buildings, West said.
The three-day ULI conference featured two days of panels on Monday and Tuesday. The event concludes Wednesday with site tours of various projects in Miami-Dade, including Related’s Liberty Square redevelopment project, the Link at Douglas transit-oriented development by The Adler Group and 13th Floor Investments, and condo buildings that allow short-term rentals.
There is 436,514 square feet under construction in the city with internationally known Aventura Mall and high-end condominium towers.
All will be Class A offices in a city where most of the existing inventory, nearly 799,000 square feet of a total of 1.13 million square feet, already is Class A, according to JLL data.
Aventura’s office market is focusing on high-end corporate towers like Inmobiliaria’s Optima complex and a medical district with offices for physicians and other health care and wellness providers.
Construction of the 12-story, 96,000-square-foot Forum Aventura at 19790 W. Dixie Highway just outside city limits wrapped up last year. The Optima complex at 21500 Biscayne Blvd. is to get its biggest building later this year when the 28-story, 300,000-square-foot Optima Onyx opens in Hallandale Beach, Broward County’s southernmost city bordering Aventura. On the Aventura side, the nine-story, 84,401-square-foot Optima White and four-story, 29,621-square-foot Optima Red were completed in 2013.
The budding medical district is growing following expansion of Aventura Hospital and Medical Center, which upgraded and added 22 rooms in a $75.6 million emergency room buildout. It then embarked on a 513-space garage and a three-story, 60-bed patient tower bringing the total number of hospital beds to nearly 500. The hospital owned by publicly traded HCA Healthcare Inc. three years ago obtained a Level Two trauma designation, one of two in Miami-Dade County.
North of the hospital, the 12-story Aventura Medical Tower was completed last year by The Faith Development Group, bringing 105,000 square feet of medical office condos. The tower at 2801 NE 213th St. is comprised of a seven-story, 472-space garage under five stories of offices.
On its heels to the east will be the medical office project Ivory 214 and 12 I 12 Aventura, 10-story buildings to be connected by a pedestrian bridge over 28th Court west of Biscayne Boulevard.
Miami’s development wave could take another step into Allapattah with a new apartment project.
On Feb. 19, the city’s Urban Development Review Board considered plans by 2323 Pointe Group LLC, an affiliate of Bay Harbor Islands-based Pointe Cos., for the 0.81-acre site at 2323 N.W. 36th St., plus 3614, 3620, 3624 and 3638 N.W. 23rd Ave. It acquired the property for $1.95 million in March 2019.
The building would total 167,689 square feet in eight stories. Designed by Modis Architects, it would have 116 apartments, 7,708 square feet of retail, 3,220 square feet of offices, and 129 parking spaces.
A recently completed office-apartment project in Miami’s booming Wynwood Arts District just secured $136 million in refinancing to pay off construction loans.
The Wynwood 25apartment building and adjacent Wynwood Annex office building opened last year.
Development team East End Capital, based in New York with a Miami office, and the Miami-based Related Group, founded and led by Jorge Perez, secured the loan from The Blackstone Group Inc.’s Blackstone Real Estate Debt Strategies.
The nine-story, 289-unit Wynwood 25 and the 60,000-square-foot Wynwood Annex sit on the northwest corner of Northwest Second Avenue and 24th Street.
Wynwood 25, which was completed last June, is 90% leased. The market-rate building at 240 NW 25th St. offers units from 400-square-foot studios to three-bedroom apartments. Amenities include an electric car charging station, heated pool with sundeck, rooftop lounge and kitchen, library with coworking areas, gym, pet grooming area and 24/7 concierge.
Wynwood Annex was built with an eye toward tenants in the technology, advertising and marketing fields. Its first tenant is the California-based Live Nation entertainment company, which took a full floor. The building has loft-style offices with 18-foot ceilings and a rooftop terrace.
The office building has 4,429 square feet of ground-floor retail and the apartment building has 28,518 square feet of retail, including the Salt & Straw ice cream shop and the Uchi restaurant, which will open soon.
The financing is another project milestone officially marking its completion, Jonathon Yormak, founder and managing principal at East End, said in a news release.
About $110 million of the proceeds was used for Wynwood 25 and the balance for Wynwood Annex.
Another co-living project is in the pipeline for Wynwood.
The project between 33-51 NW 28th St. will include 200 fully-furnished units, according to a press release. The 8-story project will have 3,600 square feet of ground-floor retail space. Amenities include a gym and rooftop pool. The Related Group will develop the project with real estate investor W5 Group. Related and W5 hired the Grove-based architectural firm Arquitectonica to design the building.
It will be another co-living building in Wynwood, behind the Property Markets Group and Greybrook Realty Partners project.
“As a Miami resident myself, I have witnessed Wynwood’s ascent with some interest,” said Ralph Winter, principal of W5 Group in the release. “However, as neighborhoods become more desirable, young people are often priced out. Co-living is an exciting proposition that offers tremendous value, enabling them to experience modern living in highly attractive units — all while meeting like-minded individuals and forming rewarding new bonds in coveted metropolitan areas.”
Co-living, or apartments building with micro units and shared amenities, including communal kitchens, is one way developers aim to resolve Miami’s growing affordability issue.
The investment is part of the effort to expand the Berlin-based Quarters co-living and property management brand on behalf of the W5 Group and the Medici Living Group. The teams are investing $300 million of equity to expand the brand in select U.S. cities from Europe. There are 14 cities across the globe, including Miami, that are expected to receive a Quarters-branded project or already have one, including Washington, D.C., New York, Chicago, the Hague, Stuttgart, Munich, Rotterdam, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Philadelphia and Düsseldorf.
The W5 Group has offices in Switzerland, New York and Miami. It established its foothold in Miami Beach in 2009.
The neighborhood continues to attract developers. A new hotel by the San Francisco-based Sonder team and an office building are also planned for Wynwood.
Related Group recently completed two projects in Wynwood and has more in the works, Vice President Jon Paul Perez told Bisnow this week. In Allapattah, it recently opened a gallery and is on the lookout for other opportunities.
“It’s gotten to that point where the buying and trading of land without developing … that ship has sailed,” Perez said. “If you’re buying land there now, you’re assuming you’re going to have to develop.”
Sterling Bay Director of Leasing Michael Lirtzman had a similar assessment. The Chicago development giant closed on a site for $18.9M in December 2018, at 545 Northwest 26th St., where it is building a 10-story, 300K SF office building called 525wyn.
“We got in at a pretty good number,” Lirtzman said. “The pricing was a little more restrained. Now it’s starting to push.”
Sophisticated national developers have “brought some discipline to the pricing,” he said, but he predicted values would stay high as the neighborhood hits maturity.
“Wynwood is in the mode of building now,” said Avison Young principal John Crotty, with the days of flipping mostly gone and big residential developers going vertical.
Allapattah, however, still has pockets of opportunity, he said. “Other than by the [Miami] River and by [Jackson Memorial] Hospital, there’s not much development.”
Related Group and partner East End Capital completed Wynwood 25 in July. Its 289 apartments are now 85% leased at $3.10 per SF, Perez said, and its 35K SF of retail is 45% leased. Another project, the Bradley, which Related developed as apartments, was instead leased entirely to Domio to be operated as short-term rentals.
Perez said that Related benefited by being the first mover, willing to take a risk.
“The bet that we were making was that people wanted to live in Wynwood, right?” he said. “I could never have told you, ‘Hey, I’m going to sign a lease for all the apartments to one operator,’ because I think at that time these types of companies did not exist.”
When Domio came around, “we were the only option for someone that wanted one of those companies to be able to be in the neighborhood,” he added. Domio reportedly fought off competition from rival short-term rental operators to sign the building.
The largest development deal in the area last year was a 1.6-acre site at the corner of Northwest 25th Street and Second Avenue, which buyer Property Markets Group and Greybrook Realty Partners paid $46M to acquire and redevelop from its existing use as a gallery into a six-story resident complex with 222 units, Crotty said.
Crotty said PMG spun out the bottom-floor retail to Tricera Capital, which should be able to garner rents around $80 per SF.
“That’s Main and Main,” said Crotty, a former NBA player who also serves as the Miami Heat’s TV analyst. “That’s top-of-the-market pricing.”
Blocks off the main drag, Wynwood rents are about $50 per SF, he said.
Office leasing at the Wynwood Annex has gone a little slowly, Perez said, but Live Nation leased a floor and he said he is in talks with potential tenants that are similar in size and credit to the events company.
“So definitely by the end of 2022, our buildings should be close, if not 100% occupied,” Perez said.
Lirtzman compared Wynwood to the Fulton Market area of Chicago, which was “where young people went to hang out. There was no office, but a vibrancy in the neighborhood.”
Sterling Bay decided to build office projects there with large floor plates and top-line amenities geared for creative tenants. It is now building its seventh Fulton Market building in a six- or seven-block radius.
Sterling Bay’s Wynwood project, which recently topped off, will include a fitness center, an indoor/outdoor bar and 440 parking spaces. Its first tenant is architecture giant Gensler, and Lirtzman said a letter of intent has been signed for a consulting firm to take 8K SF.
Goldman Properties opened the 30K SF Wynwood Garage in 2018, and a boutique office building, the eight-story, 86K SF Cube Wynwd, opened last year. Another big project, The Gateway at Wynwood, a 460K SF Class-A office building, broke ground last week.
The same forces that shaped Wynwood have affected the working-class neighborhood of Allapattah, just to the west. Whereas Wynwood had largely been made up of industrial warehouses, Allapattah now buzzes with working-class businesses. But real estate pros have been hyping it as the next hot neighborhood.
Developer Robert Wennett has proposed a mixed-use development by Danish “starchitect” Bjarke Ingels. Neology Life Development Group head Lissette Calderon in October broke ground on No. 17 Residences Allapattah, a 14-story, 192-unit apartment at 1569 Northwest 17th Ave.
“If you go have lunch on a Wednesday, it’s cops, it’s firemen, there’s people that are working nurses, doctors,” Perez said. “Allapattah probably started selling at $20 a foot, and now you have property trading at 130 bucks a foot.
“We’re not in that game of finding land and hoping for the value to rise and then flipping. So we say, ‘OK, at this price, does it make sense where I could build apartments, office, whatever it may be, at this land basis?'” he continued. “We’re looking for sites that are large enough that we can do substantial projects — 300 or so apartments there — and we haven’t found one yet that we are moving forward on.”
Calderon said in an email that construction on No. 17 Residences Allapattah has reached the fifth floor and is expected to be completed in spring 2021. She highlighted its amenities, including smart technology for package receiving, a digital concierge, a gym with virtual fitness and a “bark park” where dogs can play.
She said Neology Life is planning to break ground on another mixed-use project near No. 17, with 323 units, ground-floor retail and office space. It would begin construction after No. 17 opens in late spring 2021.
Crotty said that besides the aforementioned projects, plus a few others in the pipeline — the 555 River House proposed by Avra Jain and a yet-to-be-developed parcel he sold to billionaire developer Moishe Mana for $8.5M — Allapattah “has yet to fill in and grow,” he said.
Florida’s Department of Transportation is exploring the possibility of building a new highway exit off Interstate 95 at Northwest 29th Street.
The last time the Super Bowl came to Miami, the football stadium on the edge of the Everglades and just off the turnpike was surrounded by asphalt and dirt parking lots.
Miami-Dade County had 20% fewer apartments and 23% fewer available hotel rooms during the championship game in 2010, when Airbnb and ride-hailing companies such as Uber were in their infancy. Brightline, the commuter train service renamed Virgin Trains USA that connects Miami with West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale, didn’t exist. All those factors are expected to play major roles this weekend as Miami hosts the Super Bowl for a record 11th time, attracting more than 200,000 people to a region with a skyline that has changed dramatically.
“If you were here 10 years ago and came back, you’ll find that this city is completely different,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez said.
North of downtown, once-distressed neighborhoods such as Allapattah and Little Haiti are attracting new development that appeals to millennials who want to live close to where they work. One of the trendiest areas of Miami is Wynwood, a former industrial and garment district now drawing offices, retail and residential. Tour buses regularly pass through Wynwood, allowing visitors to snap selfies among the spray-painted graffiti that adorns many of the buildings in the rollicking arts district.
“Miami has become more of an urban place where people live and play now,” said Rodney Barreto, chairman of the Miami Super Bowl Host Committee. “It wasn’t that 10 years ago. Heck, at 6 or 7 o’clock at night you couldn’t find anybody downtown. Now at 11 o’clock at night, people are walking their dogs.”
In the past 10 years, close to 30,000 new apartments have been built across Miami-Dade County, helping make it the U.S. capital for rentals as a percentage of inventory, according to CoStar data. The market has added 11,000 more hotel rooms, not including thousands of new beds now available through home-sharing giant Airbnb. Scores of luxury condominium towers are sprouting up in downtown Miami, including one that has an amenity deck that can be transformed into a skyport for flying cars and another with a robot concierge service.
The 65,000-seat Hard Rock Stadium is now the new home of the Miami Open tennis tournament and has attracted soccer, concerts and other events. Last year, ground was broken on a $135 million Dolphins training facility next to the stadium. And gondolas were installed that will make their debut on Super Bowl Sunday, giving fans an aerial view of the pregame festivities.
“It’s definitely a different town, and we’re going to be really proud to show it off, for sure,” Barreto said.
The Feb. 2 game at Hard Rock Stadium between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers is expected to generate an estimated economic impact in excess of $400 million. Hotels in the Miami area are projected to break all-time highs for average daily rate and revenue per available room, two industry standard measurements, according to figures from STR, a travel industry data and analytics firm owned by CoStar Group, the parent company of CoStar News.
Making the Pitch
NFL owners voted in 2016 to award South Florida this year’s Super Bowl, a game that marks the league’s 100th season. They were sold after listening to a pitch from Miami Dolphins owner and Hudson Yards developer Stephen Ross about hundreds of millions of dollars he spent to renovate the aging Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, on the edge of the Everglades northwest of downtown Miami.
At the time, the Dolphins and Barreto said the region’s bid, which topped 550 pages, included a budget of cash and incentives valued at more than $40 million. Barreto now declines to discuss specifics of the bid, saying parts of it eventually will be made public.
Miami, the nation’s seventh-largest metropolitan area, is a preferred destination for the Super Bowl because of its size and the consistently warm weather, notwithstanding the Super Bowl in 2007, but even then fans found it strangely appropriate that halftime performer Prince sang his hit song “Purple Rain” in the rain.
Meanwhile, the matchups in Miami have been among the most memorable in league history.
In the second of five Super Bowls played at the Orange Bowl in Miami, New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath famously guaranteed victory over the Baltimore Colts in 1969, a huge upset that led to the merger of the NFL and the American Football League.
Twenty years later, in a new stadium privately funded by Dolphins founding owner Joe Robbie, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Joe Montana jokingly pointed out actor John Candy in the crowd to his teammates before leading them on a last-second drive to beat the Cincinnati Bengals.
A decade ago, the New Orleans Saints outlasted the now Indianapolis Colts with the help of a risky onside kick to open the second half, delivering the Big Easy’s first title, 4 1/2 years after the city was devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
But not long after the Saints beat the Colts in February 2010, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell delivered a stark message to Ross and other officials hoping to schedule another Super Bowl at Hard Rock.
“The commissioner was very adamant and very loud about we would not get another Super Bowl until we made renovations,” Barreto told CoStar News.
Stadium Improvement Process
Ross first sought public money to renovate the stadium that opened in 1987, though that effort hit a political wall. In 2014, he struck a deal with Miami-Dade to pay for the upgrades himself in exchange for bonus payments to the Dolphins for hosting the Super Bowl and other events.
The phased stadium improvements brought new seats, two new concourses, new suites, four high-definition video boards and a canopy that shades 92% of the fans. The cost: more than $550 million.
Gondolas will make their debut at Hard Rock Stadium at the Super Bowl Feb. 2 in Miami. (Paul Owers/CoStar News)
Ross’ total investment at Hard Rock Stadium now tops $700 million, noted Tom Garfinkel, president and CEO of the Dolphins and member of the Miami Super Bowl Host Committee.
“It’s a testament to Steve Ross’ commitment,” Garfinkel said in an interview. “The stadium has become a global entertainment destination.”
The NFL seems impressed.
Senior Director of Event Planning Eric Finkelstein, whose crew of 6,000 workers has been in South Florida since Jan. 2 preparing for the Super Bowl, said the new canopy allows the league to introduce surprises for fans during the championship game.
“To us, it feels like a brand new building because of how much has changed,” said Finkelstein, who is overseeing his 21st Super Bowl.
NFL owners typically vote to award the game to cities with warm weather or domed stadiums. Teams that agree to build stadiums, as the Los Angeles Rams are doing, have a good chance of eventually hosting the Super Bowl. Tampa, Florida, doesn’t have a new stadium, but NFL owners voted to move the Super Bowl there in February 2021 from Inglewood, California, because of construction delays at the Los Angeles Rams’ SoFi Stadium. It will be the fifth time Tampa has hosted the game. The big game heads to SoFi Stadium in the Los Angeles area in 2022.
Local civic and business leaders insist they aren’t taking for granted the impact of the game on South Florida, no matter how many times it has been played here.
“We have the attention and the focus of the world,” Miami Mayor Francis Suarez said.
Barreto has signed paperwork to allow South Florida to compete for the Super Bowl in any year from 2025 to 2030. He was watching on television Wednesday when Goodell, speaking at his state of the league press conference, praised local officials and indicated the game likely will return to Hard Rock Stadium.
“We’re ecstatic,” Barreto said. “I believe they like Miami. We’re experienced, and we know how to work with them.”
Come the fall, developer and entrepreneur Moishe Mana will break ground on his first project in Wynwood. And more will soon follow, he said.
Mana is ready to proceed with a three-story, 35,410-square-foot building at 2900 NW Fifth Ave. that will house the Puerto Rican Chamber of Commerce and some additional offices for Miami-Dade County, according to Berenblum Busch Architects.
The architectural firm will submit the final design and construction documents by late January for the building and expects to have permits in hand by August, said Gustavo Berenblum, the firm’s founding principal.
Construction is slated to begin in September. The chamber, currently at 3550 Biscayne Blvd., is expected to relocate to the new digs by November 2021.
The three-story building will include a ground floor café, retail and meeting spaces, and 6,800 square feet of ground-floor parking, according to Gustavo Berenblum, the firm’s founding principal. The second floor will host offices for the chamber and county. The third floor will have additional offices as well as a 6,800-square-foot terrace facing south toward 29th Street.
Originally designed as a four-story building, the project was downsized at the request of the developer and county to meet the construction budget of $8.4 million. The four-story design would have cost $11 million, Berenblum said.
As part of an agreement between Mana and Miami-Dade County, the county will pay about $2 million from a bond; Mana will pay the rest.
The development comes as the neighborhood’s office market expands. The prior year saw the largest amount of Class A and Class B office space development since 2009, and Wynwood is receiving much of that new square footage.
Mana owns 40 mostly contiguous acres in Wynwood. His plan for the neighborhood includes a trade center occupying 8.5 acres from west of Northwest Fifth Avenue to Interstate 95.
The Israeli-born developer is also focused on planning and designing the front lot of a 4.5-acre development with buildings scaling two-to-three stories between Northwest 23rd St. up to Northwest 22nd St. and Northwest 2nd Ave.
“It will add another dimension to Wynwood,” Mana said.
He expects to complete the design in about two months.
The Wynwood neighborhood was one of the first areas settled by Puerto Rican immigrants who moved to Miami in the 1950s.
“It’s important to have the chamber in Wynwood because we don’t want to lose this part of the community,” Mana said. “We want to keep the culture.”
Said Berenblum Busch Architects Principle Claudia Busch, “It’s an opportunity for the Puerto Rican community to have a place of its own. You already have many Puerto Rican institutions that are there contributing to the health of the local economy there.”
Mana’s company also plans to provide financial support for chamber events, he said. To date, it has given $60,000, according to the chamber.
“We plan to initiate an arts program to attract artists from Puerto Rico and local artists for cultural events,” said Luis De Rosa, the president of the Puerto Rican Chamber of Commerce. “We also plan to provide aid to small businesses.”
Mana started searching for a Wynwood location for the chamber in 2011, he said, and signed an agreement with the county in 2015. Previously, the group planned to build at Northwest Second Ave. and 21st Street but abandoned that location due to environmental issues with the property, Busch said.
Special Area Plans have enabled developers to build massive projects in the city of Miami like Brickell City Centre, River Landing Shops and Residences, Mana Wynwood, the Miami Produce Center (pictured above), and Magic City Innovation District.
SAPs have also antagonized neighborhood activists who fear that such massive developments destroy the character of low-rise neighborhoods and speed up the displacement of individuals and families who can’t afford the skyrocketing rents or property taxes.
Now, the Miami Planning, Zoning and Appeals Board is recommending that no other SAPs be approved.
By a vote of 6 to 3 on Wednesday, the board approved a resolution to repeal the Special Area Plan provision that enables property owners who assemble more than 9 acres of land to seek extensive zoning changes.
Such a repeal still needs to be approved, twice, by the Miami City Commission, which is embarking on its own review of the entire Miami 21 zoning code, including SAPs.
Planning board member Adam Gersten cast one of the dissenting votes, saying he feared that commissioners may simply ignore a recommendation to repeal, and advocated for a moratorium on SAPs instead. As part of that moratorium, the board could recommend reforms, including that the SAP causes no net loss of affordable housing in the surrounding area, Gersten suggested.
Chris Collins, another dissenting voter, agreed. “I think it would be more proactive and go a longer way if we specify what we want to change and how to change it,” Collins said.
But board member Alex Dominguez said that while the city tries to “workshop this thing to death,” more people are being displaced by legislation that encourages land speculation.
“If you do a moratorium… it’s like putting lipstick on a pig, and at the end of the day, it’s still a pig,” Dominguez said.
He also argued that many real estate developers “don’t even want to touch SAPs” because of the community opposition they tend to attract.
“It’s not a big deal to repeal SAPs from Miami 21,” Dominguez said, adding that “keeping it alive and tweaking it is affecting a hell of a lot more people negatively rather than positively.”
Neisen Kasdin, a land use attorney affiliated with Akerman, rose in defense of SAPS, arguing that the legislation has enabled “good” projects like the expansion of Ransom Everglades private school in Coconut Grove and the ongoing construction of an EmpathiCare Village for Alzheimer’s patients at Miami Jewish Health Systems in Buena Vista. SAP developers must also offer “community benefit agreements” in exchange for approval, Kasdin added.
“If you pass this legislation, you are not just throwing the baby out with the bath water, you are throwing out the baby,” Kasdin said.
But Marleine Bastien, executive director of Family Action Network Movement (FANM), said one of Kasdin’s clients, Magic City Innovation District, is an example of a “bad SAP” that has already indirectly led to the displacement of several residents and small businesses. That project, which was approved by the city commission last June, is being challenged in court by Warren Perry, a Little Haiti resident affiliated with FANM. One of the project’s initial investors, Robert Zangrillo, is also fighting charges from the U.S. Attorney’s Office related to the college admission fraud scandal, as well as charges from the Federal Trade Commission that he co-owned fraudulent websites.
Leonie Hermantin, a board member of Concerned Leaders of Little Haiti, said that although her organization supported the Magic City Innovation District, the group is also in favor of repealing the SAP provision.
“We know that the impact of multiple SAPs in our community will be detrimental,” Hermantin told the board. “I agree with Mr. Kasdin. There are good SAPs and there are bad SAPs. The problem is, unfortunately, that bad SAPs have been allowed to go through.”
The board has kept one controversial SAP in limbo: Eastside Ridge, a proposed 5.4 million-square-foot project that will be built less than a mile from the 8.2-million-square foot Magic City Innovation District and across the street from Miami Jewish Health. The planning board has continued the project five times, with members demanding improvements. In response, SPV Realty, Eastside Ridge’s developers, filed a lawsuit demanding that the board make a decision on the project — either recommending for or against it — so that it can be heard by the Miami City Commission.
Board member Anthony Parrish said Eastside Ridge helped make up his mind on whether or not to support repealing SAPs.
“One attorney of a major project said, ‘Just deny us. We just want to get to the commission,’” Parrish said. “That is what provided, at least for this member of the board, a need to repeal this.”
For those who thought the pop-up trend was coming to a close, guess again. Pop-up stores are proliferating in cities across the country, including Miami.
The most popular local pop-up hubs: the Design District, Lincoln Road and Wynwood.
That news comes from a December report Pop-up-a-Palooza! published by Cushman & Wakefield in December. The report studied digital brands that opened for the first time in a bricks-and-mortar space during Halloween, the busiest time of year for pop-ups. In 2019, about 2,500 temporary Halloween stores opened across the country — an 80% increase from 10 years ago, when 1,400 stores opened.
Miami was one of 37 cities listed as a stronghold of activities. New York, Las Vegas and Los Angeles were also on the list.
