Oak Row Equities and Vlad Doronin’s OKO Group paid $520 million for a bayfront Brickell property, marking the biggest development site sale in Miami and likely the state.
The December trade added fuel to the real estate industry’s narrative that Miami’s financial district is a prime market, insulated from the headwinds felt in most of the rest of the tri-county region and much of the nation, including elevated interest rates.
Some lenders still are skittish, as South Florida has felt the sting in recent years from higher insurance and materials costs.
Yet, Brickell remains a prime target for investors and developers. It became a magnet for out-of-state companies in the first years of the pandemic, as well as residential development.
Most of the tri-county region’s top development site deals have been in Brickell, with a few exceptions. Here’s a look at some of Miami’s most notable urban land sales over the years.
- OKO and Oak Row’s new record
Miami-based OKO and Oak Row, with offices in New York and Miami, paid $122.4 million per acre for the 4.25-acre Brickell site.
Part of the purchase was financed by $85 million in transferable seller financing notes, according to Aimco’s Dec. 22 filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The property consists of the 32-story Brickell Bay Office Tower at 1001 Brickell Bay Drive and the adjacent 31-story, 357-unit Yacht Club Apartments at 1111 Brickell Bay Drive. Both are income-producing.
For the first phase of their redevelopment, OKO and Oak Row plan a hotel and branded condos, they said in a news release.
The project will add to the surge in development of branded residences in South Florida, as the tri-county region is the epicenter of such projects in North America, according to Knight Frank. Miami had 48 completed and 55 planned branded projects as of last month, second only to Dubai, according to Savills.
The Brickell property can be developed with multiple supertalls totaling more than 3 million square feet across property types. The Federal Aviation Administration caps heights in Miami to 1,049 feet. The site has 485 feet of Biscayne Bay frontage.
Robert Given and Troy Ballard led the CBRE team that marketed the Aimco site. Aimco, which last month announced a voluntary liquidation amid a slower multifamily market nationwide, listed the property last year, asking about $650 million.
- Ken Griffin’s HQ supertall site
For the past three years, billionaire hedge funder Ken Griffin held the record for the biggest South Florida development site deal.
In 2022, an entity tied to Griffin paid $363 million –– or $145.2 million per acre –– for the 2.5-acre vacant bayfront site at 1201 Brickell Bay Drive, also in Miami’s Brickell.
Griffin, who moved his hedge fund Citadel and sister market marker company Citadel Securities’ headquarters from Chicago to Miami in 2022, plans a 1,032-foot-tall supertall tower on the site. Designed by starchitect Norman Foster’s firm, the $1 billion-plus project will have 1.3 million square feet of office space on the first 34 floors, including space for the headquarters for Citadel and Citadel Securities. The firms are temporarily leasing space elsewhere, including at 830 Brickell.
Some of the office space at the supertall will be leased to other companies.
The 54-story project also will have 212 hotel keys on the upper floors, fine dining restaurants with 915 seats and an over 5,200-square-foot health and spa area with open space. In January, Griffin and New York-based Related Companies, led by Jeff Blau and President Bruce Beal Jr., announced they are partnering on the project.
The site was long slated for a supertall. The Hollo family’s Florida East Coast Realty, which sold the land to Griffin, and Corigin Real Estate Group and Frank McCourt’s McCourt Global Properties had planned a pair of 1,049-foot-tall buildings on the property that never came to fruition. That project also was designed by Foster + Partners.
- Site of Swire’s scrapped office supertall
Swire Properties revealed its planned One Brickell City Centre supertall in 2022. This year, Swire Properties, which is the real estate arm of Hong Kong-based Swire, sold the 2.8-acre site for $211.5 million.
Miami-based Melo Group, led by brothers Carlos and Martin Melo, bought the site at 700 and 799 Brickell Avenue in Miami in May for $75.5 million per acre. Melo Group, which has built over 8,000 condos and rentals in Miami and was started by the Argentine family’s patriarch, Jose Luis Ferreira de Melo, hasn’t revealed development plans for the property.
Swire, which at one point was to partner with Related Companies on the project, had planned on a 1,000-foot-tall tower with 1.4 million square feet offices. It scored approval for some of the largest floor plates in Miami, from 40,000 square feet on upper floors to 60,000 square feet on lower floors.
This year, Swire scrapped the office supertall just as the pandemic-era influx of out-of-state companies to South Florida slowed. (Related wasn’t involved in the project by then.) Swire Properties President Henry Bott told Bloomberg “the pre-leasing for that specific scheme has not materialized in the way that we had hoped.”
Because of the tower’s large size, it required significant pre-leasing before it could secure a construction loan. Though out-of-state firms took big blocks of space from late 2020 through 2022, their appetite to Miami offices waned in subsequent years.
- The Aston Martin condos site
In 2014, a trio of developers sold the 1.25-acre bayfront lot next to the Epic Residences & Hotel in downtown Miami for $125 million –– one of the top deals at the time. It broke down to $100 million per acre.
Buyer G&G Business Developments, led by German Coto of the Argentine Coto Supermarkets family, completed the 66-story, 391-unit Aston Martin Residences condo on the property last year.
The sellers of the property at 300 Biscayne Boulevard Way were Spanish billionaire Amancio Ortega’s Pontegadea family investment firm, Ugo Colombo of Miami-based CMC Group and Diego Lowenstein. Ortega and CMC Group completed the adjacent 54-story Epic with 414 hotel keys and 362 condos, in 2008.
- Dubai firm buys Surfside collapse site
Dubai-based Damac Properties closed on its $120 million purchase of the Surfside collapse site in 2022.
The 12-story Champlain Towers South, at 8777 Collins Avenue, collapsed in the early morning of June 24, 2021, killing 98 people. The judge overseeing the class-action lawsuit over the tragedy ordered the sale of the oceanfront property. Damac was the sole bidder.
Founded by billionaire Hussain Sajwani, Damac has developed luxury condos, many of them branded, across the Middle East and London. Damac’s Surfside project is its first ground-up development in the U.S.
Damac launched sales of its planned luxury 12-story, 37-unit development, called Delmore, a year ago. Designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, Delmore will consist of four- and five-bedroom condos, averaging more than 7,000 square feet with asking prices starting at $15 million. Penthouses will start at 10,000 square feet.
Damac’s purchase broke down to about $60 million per acre for the nearly 2-acre site.
- The biggest deal that never closed
In 2023, a group of investors led by David Martin’s Coconut Grove-based Terra was in line to purchase the Miami Herald’s former bayfront site for $1.2 billion. But the deal, which would have set an all-time record for Florida, was called off two months after Terra and its partners put the 15-acre site under contract.
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia-based gambling operator Genting Group listed the land at 1431 North Bayshore Drive in Miami’s Arts & Entertainment District, which represents more than half of Genting’s holdings in the area.
When Smart City Miami, the Terra-led group, put the property under contract, it gave a boost to the market, giving momentum for other South Florida deals at a time of higher interest rates and other headwinds.
In a joint statement about the deal cancellation, Smart City and Genting said the buyers sought amendments to the purchase terms and an extension to the due diligence period. At the time, it was expected that either Smart City would submit another bid or that Genting would renegotiate with some of the other four bidders. The property remains unsold.
Genting paid $236 million for the 14.6-acre ex-Herald site in 2011, marking the top development site deal at the time. The newspaper’s building was subsequently torn down.
If Smart City had closed on its $1.2 billion purchase, that deal would have penciled out to $77.4 million per acre.
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