A distressed Miami River development site tied to allegations of fraud hit the market again with a reduced asking price of $18 million.
The 1.8-acre property comes with city approvals for a 40-unit townhome development called Miami River Cove, previously planned by a joint venture led by Marlon Gomez, who leads Miami-based Gomez Development. Gomez’s partner is an entity managed by Fausto Callava and Antonio Pardo, who lead Coral Gables-based development firm Avenue 4 Partners.
An affiliate of Coral Gables-based The Fiorentino Family Office has a pending foreclosure complaint against the Gomez-led entity that owns the Miami River site. The lawsuit alleges the Gomez-led entity defaulted on a $10 million loan by missing monthly payments, failing to repay the full amount on a January maturity date and submitting “fraudulent” documents to obtain the mortgage.
Gomez and his partners denied any wrongdoing, and Gomez Development and Avenue 4 are not parties to the foreclosure complaint.
On July 9, Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Beatrice Butchko Sanchez appointed retired judge Alan Fine as receiver for the entity that owns the development site and authorized him to sell the property, court records show. Fine hired Arthur Porosoff with Porosoff Group and Arden Karson with Karson & Co. to market the site.
“We have a mandate to sell,” Karson told The Real Deal. “It’s a prime site in a submarket that is really strong.”
Porosoff previously listed the property on behalf of the Gomez-led entity with an asking price of $25 million.
A recent offering memorandum shows the site’s current zoning allows 36 units per acre that can be either multifamily or townhomes. While the property is approved for 40 townhomes, a buyer could potentially build up to 63 units, the memorandum states.
A buyer could also upzone the property to make it eligible for a Live Local Act project similar to River Landing, a nearby mixed-use project with 528 apartments, 135,000 square feet offices and 300,000 square feet of retail anchored by Publix, Burlington and TJ Maxx stores, according to the offering.
In its foreclosure complaint, The Fiorentino Family Office entity alleges that Gomez provided “a fraudulent financial statement and concealed the fact that the [he] was already in default of a separate loan agreement” secured by an unrelated development site in Aventura.
The family office has ties to Carl Fiorentino, an ex-Miami tech executive who served nearly six years in prison following a 2014 conviction on felony conspiracy charges for his leading role in a kickback scheme, court records show.
