With Or Without Courthouse, Miami-Dade’s Debt Tax Set To Soar

Miami-Dade’s debt tax will soar in the coming years, even if voters reject a $390 million borrowing plan for a new courthouse, according to county forecasts.

Without a dollar of new debt for the judiciary, county forecasts show the special property tax that pays for the county’s debt is set to jump by about 50 percent in 2016. That’s thanks to the arrival of new debt that voters already approved for the county-owned Jackson hospital system, as well as rapidly increasing borrowing costs tied to a nearly $3 billion bond program that voters approved in 2004. “I can’t borrow money without having an impact on taxes,” said Ed Marquez, deputy county mayor for finance. “There is no free lunch.”

Currently costing $45 for every $100,000 of a property’s value, the debt tax funds borrowing approved by Miami-Dade voters and generates the revenue behind a wide portfolio of construction projects.  This year it is backing about $1.4 billion in borrowed funds used to create the new Pérez Art Museum Miami, expand county park facilities, build the Miami-Dade police headquarters, dig a tunnel to PortMiami and back hundreds of other projects. It also would allow Miami-Dade to borrow $75 million for an economic-development grant program that Mayor Carlos Gimenez wants to use to provide $9 million for the SkyRise Miami project.

MiamiDadeDebtTaxEven with property values rising more than 5 percent annually, a county forecast shows the debt load will get expensive enough that the tax will need to grow next year to $69 per $100,000 of value. That’s about a 50 percent increase. By 2020, it would cost $84 per $100,000 — about 85 percent higher than it is today. Like all property taxes, the debt tax is technically levied in “mills” per $1 of taxable assessed property value. One mill is one-tenth of a cent. The current debt-tax rate is 0.45 mills, which amounts to 45 cents for every $1,000 of value, or $45 per $100,000.

In an interview, Gimenez said the county’s conservative real-estate forecasts could mean the debt tax won’t have to go up as much as forecast. “Hopefully that tax rate can go down in the future,” he said. “I would like to keep it as low as possible. But it’s how much we borrowed versus what the tax base is.”

Even with the forecast increase, the debt tax would remain a sliver of the average tax bill. The current debt tax rate is one-tenth the size of the general property tax rate of $466 per $100,000, which funds police, parks, social services and other core county services. “It’s kind of a footnote on the tax bill,” said Terry Murphy, a former County Commission staffer now working as a consultant for unions and other groups. “I don’t think anyone pays any attention to it.”

Still, the debt tax is already far larger than the county’s library tax, which is $28 per $100,000 of taxable assessed value. The debt tax also played a role almost five years ago in propelling Gimenez into the mayor’s office.

In 2011, then-Mayor Carlos Alvarez’s budget boosted the debt tax more than 50 percent — from 0.29 mills to 0.45 — in order to combat the sharp drop in revenue brought on by the collapse of South Florida’s real estate market. The move violated a pledge county leaders made in 2004 to keep the rate below 0.40 while campaigning for the $2.9 billion Building Better Communities program. The BBC initiative, passed handily by voters, still accounts for the vast majority of borrowing costs funded by the debt tax.

Gimenez, at the time a county commissioner, joined a minority opposing the debt-tax hike. “It’s important to keep your word,” Gimenez said of the 2004 pledge. When he won election after voters recalled Alvarez in 2011, Gimenez rolled back his predecessor’s tax increases, including a reset of the debt tax to the prior year’s level.

The debt-tax relief didn’t last long. Last year, Gimenez proposed a hike to 0.42 mills as part of a larger tax increase to boost spending on fire, libraries and animal services. Facing a political firestorm, the mayor backed off on the tax-hike push for services, but the debt-tax increase survived. With little fuss, it increased a tiny bit again in the 2015 budget year, which began October 1.

In a recent interview, Gimenez said the real estate crisis and voters’ desire for the BBC projects left Miami-Dade with no choice but to move past the ceiling mapped out during the housing boom. “I’m a low-tax, no-increase kind of guy,” he said. “But I do believe in infrastructure. [It’s] one of the things that separates us from the Third World.”

One reason the debt tax tends to avoid the firestorm that follows even tiny increases in other property taxes is the fact that it pays off debt previously endorsed by voters. And while the county mayor and commissioners decide every 12 months when to borrow the money and where to set the tax, the actual rate is driven by debt incurred in prior years.

On Nov. 4, voters may authorize borrowing up to $393 for a new courthouse. But it would not be until 2021 that commissioners would need to increase taxes by a noticeable amount to pay back the money, according to the forecast prepared by the county budget office.

The $393 million sought for replacing Miami-Dade’s moldy and cramped 1928 civil courthouse with a new facility in downtown Miami is equal to about 25 percent of the tax’s current debt load.

With the forecast debt-tax rates, new courthouse borrowing would, on average, push up the tax an additional 8 percent during the next 20 years — about $5.50 for every $100,000 in value, according to county projections. (Over 30 years, the courthouse bonds would cost an average of $7 for every $100,000 in value, according to the forecasts.) “When you look at the average value of a house, it’s so tiny,” said Katy Sorenson, a former county commissioner now running a Miami-Dade panel overseeing spending on the BBC program. “It’s an investment in the future. It’s for future generations.”

The entire courthouse debt would cost Miami-Dade an average of about $24 million a year to pay back through 2045, according to the forecasts. In all, the payments, with interest, would total $733 million over 30 years.

Ballot items allowing Miami-Dade to incur debt for projects are typically called bond programs, since governments borrow money by selling bonds on Wall Street. Investors make a profit on the interest payments that governments pay bond holders, and those payments come from the debt tax.

Bond payments for Jackson account for about 35 percent of the debt-tax increase in 2016. The rest comes from increased borrowing costs tied to the $2.9 billion BBC program. Without a larger tax roll, Miami-Dade can control the tax only by delaying existing payments or scrapping future borrowing.

Esteban “Steve” Bovo, one of two county commissioners to vote against the courthouse plan, said Miami-Dade shouldn’t minimize the impact of a debt-tax increase. “There’s a reality that the number many of us think is insignificant is significant to others,” he said.

Advocates of the courthouse plan say Miami-Dade’s justice system desperately needs the money to replace the existing facility, which has half the courtrooms needed for all 40 judges and leaks to the point that some areas are closed because of mold contamination. “This is a crisis situation,” said Commissioner Sally Heyman, who joined the majority of the 13-member commission last month to send the courthouse item to voters. “It’s become a situation of: Do we invest in ourselves?”

Of the $393 million sought from voters, about $25 million is slated for repairs to the existing building so it can last the five years needed to build a replacement. Opponents of the courthouse plan say Miami-Dade already has about $78 million available for repairs, and argue the delay should be used to craft a more thoughtful strategy for replacing the current facility.

The $78 million would also come from the debt tax, since the money was earmarked in the original 2004 BBC plan for court facilities. Borrowing it would also contribute to a tax increase, though the extra debt is wrapped into the current county forecasts. “Something has to be done,” said Joseph Serota, a Miami lawyer helping the new-courthouse campaign. “The longer we put it off, the more expensive it is.”

Scattered polling shows the courthouse issue faces an uphill climb with voters, and one challenge is the unusually blunt language that county commissioners inserted into the ballot item. It states that issuing the courthouse bonds means “potentially increasing property taxes.”

The phrase “property taxes” did not appear in the other major bond items passed by voters during the past 10 years. Neither did the concept of any tax actually “increasing.”

The 2004 BBC ballot questions talked of “bonds … payable from ad valorem taxes.” A $1.2 billion borrowing plan for the county school system, which has its own debt tax, asked voters in 2012 to approve bonds “secured by the full faith and credit and ad-valorem taxing power of the district.” The Jackson question last year wanted permission to issue bonds “payable from ad valorem taxes collected in Miami-Dade County.”

Latin for “to the value,” ad valorem is essentially the legalese equivalent of property taxes. All three ballot questions passed easily.

Jorge Luis Lopez, a County Hall lobbyist and a lawyer helping run the courthouse campaign, said the tradition of leaving “property tax” out of past ballot questions made them less challenging to pass. “We’re the first,” he said. “We may have to pay a price for that.”

 

Source: Miami Herald

/by

How Climate Change Is Fueling the Miami Real Estate Boom

, , ,

As a city sitting virtually at sea level, Miami has been called ground zero for the problems posed by climate change, a place where rising sea levels threaten its future existence.

The latest forecast of sea level rise from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for example, predicts that by later this century, global sea levels will be two feet higher than they are today, quite possibly higher. Under that scenario, the nuisance flooding in Miami that periodically comes with high tides will be a daily affair, the storm surge impact of hurricanes will be amplified, and lower-lying areas of the city will be uninhabitable. That’s actually not the worst of it: Under higher sea levels, the Biscayne Aquifer—where southeast Florida draws its drinking water—will increasingly suffer from saltwater intrusion, a problem for which there is no foreseen solution other than the investment of billions of dollars in water treatment facilities.

As bleak as this future would seem to be, few with real skin in the game in Miami—residents, real estate investors, and companies—are backing away from long-term investment. Exhibit A: Miami has been undergoing a nearly unprecedented surge in real estate construction, with planning discussions centering less on who will leave first and more on how high new projects can be built. Among the projects under way, for example, is an 80-plus-story behemoth in Brickell Center, the city’s urban core. If Miami is on the verge of being a modern-day Atlantis, those who would have the most to lose are apparently not buying it.

Why this apparent deafness to the dire warnings? Well, here’s a paradox. If one talks to developers and city commissioners in the area, it’s hard to find evidence of overt denial of current and future risk; Miami was a city, after all, almost completely destroyed by a hurricane in 1926, and most concede that a recurrence is a matter of when, not whether. Likewise, few deny that the city’s unique geography makes it vulnerable to the effects of rising sea levels. It’s a long-term problem that the planning commissions of Miami and Miami Beach acknowledge exists and threatens to get worse.

Where locals disagree with outsiders, however, is about how best to deal with the problem. Rather than sounding alarms and cutting back on development, there’s an implicit sense that the best approach may be, ironically, to do the opposite. And while a strong case can be made that this behavior has no rational basis, it may represent Miami’s best long-term hope for dealing with the threats posed by climate change, one that other cities might be advised to mimic: The best strategy, in fact, may be to foster a collective belief that there’s no threat—or at least not one serious enough to lose sleep over.

Before an explanation why, let’s first address the two standard explanations for the building boom, explanations that are indeed part of the puzzle. The first is that real estate developers, by their nature, are gamblers with short planning horizons. In the late 2000s, the real estate and equities crash quickly wiped out many builders. One might assume that would have made them skittish. To the contrary, the quick recovery that followed taught most that big risks are worth taking, and are survivable. While developers today may concede that sea levels are rising, it’s a risk that lies well beyond their investment horizons, and in any case is dwarfed by the more immediate risk of a returning recession.

The second explanation is that many of the buyers for all the new condo units are cash investors from Latin America, and the risks of Miami real estate—overdevelopment, speculation, environmental unsustainability—remain small relative to similar investments back home. No one is saying that real estate isn’t risky in Miami, or that sea level rise is fiction. What they are saying is that all investment carries risk, and development there is a bet they’re prepared to take.

But there’s another rational reason why even risk-averse residents in South Florida might, paradoxically, hope that buyers and sellers remain collectively naïve, or at least act as if they are, about the risks of sea level rise. South Florida relies almost exclusively on real estate taxes to fund public infrastructure. If the threat (or reality) of sea level rise suppresses property valuations, there will be less public money to address the risk. As an illustration, the head of public works for Miami Beach recently argued that the city would be wise to accelerate its investments in storm water drainage improvements ($100 million now and $400 million planned) simply because the city has the tax base to afford it—something it could not necessarily count on in the future.

Because buyers and sellers in Miami Beach have yet to connect the dots between nuisance flood events and the future consequences of sea level rise, property buyers continue to be drawn to the area, and development projects continue unabated—both of which are essential for a continued healthy tax base. If and when buyers and sellers do connect the dots, everything changes: Doing so could spark a rapid downward wealth spiral that, once initiated, would be difficult to reverse. Lowering property valuations would reduce the city’s tax revenue which, in turn, would leave it with less money to shore up the city against sea level rise. The city would then be forced to choose between two losing remedies: increase taxes on those who choose to stay, or decline to make the needed improvements. Both, of course, would only exacerbate the problem. Miami’s best move at that point would be to go hat in hand to the state and federal government for a bailout, but that seems unlikely. Quite aside from the “I-told-you-so” reactions that such pleas might evoke, almost all coastal communities would be facing similar problems and asking for commensurate help. Miami Beach as we know it now could cease to exist long before the Atlantic reclaims Collins Avenue.

Given this, South Florida’s best shot at coping with the long-term environmental threat may be a strategy that no doubt seems perverse to environmentalists: aggressively foster a collective belief that sea level rise is not something we urgently need to worry about. South Florida is potentially facing a huge adaptation bill down the road, and paying for it will require a healthy tax base. Keeping that tax base flush depends on a cooperative equilibrium where buyers and sellers maintain an optimistic view that it’s tomorrow’s problem, one that will be easily tackled when the time comes. This keeps the coffers filled and provides the resources needed to pay for the engineering adaptations required to keep the game going.

In this light, Miami’s construction cranes aren’t monuments to climate change denial.  Quite to the contrary—they’re the instruments that may, indirectly, allow the city to survive global warming. Controlled ignorance, in some cases, can be a good thing.

 

Source: Bloomberg Businessweek

/by

New Renderings For Park Grove Are Out

,

ParkGrove2The latest renderings are out for Park Grove, a luxury condo project in Coconut Grove designed by starchitect Rem Koolhaas.

 The towers’ shapes were inspired by Biscayne Bay’s islands, according to Curbed.

ParkGrove3The development is a joint venture between Terra Group and The Related Group and plans call for two 20-story, 72-unit condo towers and a third 20-story building with 140 units.

 

Source: Real Deal

/by

Renaissance in the Grove: The Coconut Grove Neighborhood Evolves And Re-Emerges

, ,

Miami-Dade has long been a place of varied styles, each city within the County bringing its own special flare to the mélange.

The different neighborhoods have experienced their own evolutions since Miami’s inception in 1896. Coconut Grove has had its own unique evolution.

ULI SE Florida/Caribbean will be hosting an event focusing on the latest transformation of one of Miami’s most storied neighborhoods with its residents, architects, investors, developers, and historians.

On Tuesday, November 4, 2014, from 5:30 PM – 8:30 PM, panelists will discuss how it will continue to remain ahead of the curve. A new standard has been applied to the quality of housing and retail uses in The Grove.

The event will take place at Park Grove, located at 2701 South Bayshore Drive.

Confirmed speakers include:

  • Bernardo Fort-Brescia, Principal, Arquitectonica
  • Ezra Katz, Chairman/CEO, Aztec Group, Inc.
  • Justin Kennedy, Co-CEO, Grass River Property
  • David Martin, President, Terra Group
  • Commissioner Marc Sarnoff, City of Miami
  • Moderator: Dr. Paul George, Ph.D., Professor, Miami Dade College

Additional panelists to be announced.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TO REGISTER

/by

Miami Has A $10 Million Plan To Reopen Toxic Parks

, ,

It began with lead and arsenic in the soil at a small Coconut Grove dog park. Then elevated levels of barium and copper beneath a sloping lawn near residential Coral Gables. Followed by antimony and iron around the playing courts of Douglas Park.

One by one, the city of Miami shut down a series of parks starting last September after tests showed elevated levels of toxins in the soil. The closures alarmed residents and embarrassed city officials, who’d known for years about contamination concerns linked to an old West Grove incinerator.

All 112 of Miami’s parks were tested, and portions or all of seven closed for clean-up. One year later, the city is prepared to spend an estimated $11 million — more than triple initial projections — to remediate and reopen the tainted parks. Their plan is simple, though to some disconcerting: leave the contaminated soil in place and bury it two feet below the surface. “This two-foot option is not only an option we’re applying at all our parks, it’s the option that the county applies itself at their parks that get remediated,” said Deputy City Manager Alice Bravo. “This is the standard in South Florida.”

Under the plan, two feet of clean fill will be placed over contaminated soil. If the fill is less than two feet thick, a liner is also spread between the soil and the clean fill, explained Wilbur Mayorga, chief of the county’s Division of Environmental Monitoring and Restoration. New grass, artificial turf or recycled rubber mulch or mats top the fill, although those options are purely aesthetic, he said. Plans can vary from park to park, depending on the terrain and type of structures in place. “The approach is not new,” Mayorga said, explaining that both federal and state environmental rules allow clean-up methods that “rely on a cap or a barrier to eliminate any exposure to contaminated soil.”

Some parks, like Blanche Park, a small neighborhood park popular with tots and dogs, and Curtis Park, a much larger sprawling sports complex north of the Miami River, will have wells to monitor groundwater and ensure contamination doesn’t spread. At Merrie Christmas Park on South LeJeune Road in Coconut Grove, the city plans to move between a foot and two feet of contaminated soil from one area to another to level the park according to new design plans, Mayorga said.

Working with county regulators, the city has to continue to conduct inspections of the parks after reopening them. Covenants will also be attached to the land to warn future generations of the contamination, Mayorga said. “But at the end of the day, all contaminated soil in the park will have the required and approved engineering controls on top,” he said.

To date, the city has reopened only Blanche Park and has had its plans approved by the county for Merrie Christmas Park, half of which is still closed. Plans for Curtis, Douglas, Billie Rolle, Southside and Bayfront parks still need the county’s approval. But the city has surveyed the extent of the contamination at most parks, perhaps marking the end of a long period of uncertainty about the city’s problems.

Concerns about toxins and contamination first arose in 2011, when the city discovered contaminated soil at a firefighter training facility located at an old, defunct Jefferson Street incinerator dubbed Old Smokey by residents in the West Grove. County regulators ordered the city to find out exactly what was polluting the soil and address it, but it took two years to issue a report, which showed elevated levels of arsenic and other heavy metals like barium and lead. Even then, the contamination only became public knowledge after a University of Miami graduate student stumbled upon it.

Under intensified scrutiny from the university, residents and county regulators, Miami officials began sampling soils in a one-mile radius. When contaminants were discovered at nearby Blanche Park and then Merrie Christmas Park, the county ordered the city to test all its parks, setting off the discovery of five other contaminated sites.

The city’s slow response has fostered cynicism from residents near the parks and activists, who continue to distrust Miami’s handling of the matter. A group of residents around Merrie Christmas Park is protesting plans to redistribute some of the toxic soil beneath the park’s surface, and say they only learned about the details from the city’s contractor.

Anthony Alfieri, a UM law professor whose Environmental Justice Project unearthed contamination concerns, said the city continues to keep residents in the dark about its plans and actions. The city, by designating its contaminated parks as “Brownfields” this July in order to receive reimbursement from the federal government for clean-up efforts, increased its obligation to seek public input. But Alfieri said it doesn’t appear the city has done any outreach. “The city and the county are clearly committed to a policy of non-accountability,” Alfieri said. “And they ensure that by failing to reach out to the community and inform the community.”

Ken Russell, a woodcarver who lives next to Merrie Christmas Park, has loudly criticized the city’s plan and says he worries about the health of his three children, ages 12, 2 and 5 months. He says he understands that capping toxic soil is safe but is frustrated that the city’s plans will move contaminated material from the western edge of the park to some depressed areas that are currently closed off to the public but apparently untainted.

Another issue for Russell is the county has marked his home as being located within a quarter-mile of a contamination site, which he and other neighbors worry lowers their property values. He said if the city is digging up soil, it ought to simply remove it. “The city did this dumping. Even though it was 50 years ago, it’s their doing and it’s their responsibility to clean it up,” he said. “We want a clean-up, not a cover-up.”

Bravo stressed that the city’s plans are safe and sound, and she said the cost of removing toxic soils is simply too steep. Bravo said estimates put the price of removing soil at Merrie Christmas Park at $3million, though the city isn’t sure about the depth of the tainted soil.

By designating six closed parks as Brownfields — Blanche Park, the first to close, was reopened months ago — the city can apply for reimbursement of expenses up to $500,000 for each park. The city is also hoping that dredge from the port tunnel dig can be used as fill if it’s left over from a bond-funded project at Virginia Key. But even then, the final price tag for clean-up could be in the millions, and Bravo said the city doesn’t have the money to remove the tainted soil. “When this material is removed it has to be taken to a certain dump site approved by the county,” said Bravo. “The disposal is very expensive.”

Russell has in recent weeks gone back and forth with Commissioner Marc Sarnoff over the city’s plans. Sarnoff, who lives across the street from Blanche Park, defended the city’s handling of the closed parks. He said he has talked at least a dozen times with homeowners groups about what the city is doing to address clean-up issues, and said the city held two public hearings with scientists in attendance to answer questions when concerns were first raised.

Sarnoff said he understands fretting about real estate values — his home is also marked as being next to a contaminated site — but believes they’re overblown. He and Bravo say the city has done its best to publicize the issue, but are trying to schedule another meeting to explain what’s happening with its closed parks. “I guess you can always do more,” said Sarnoff. “But is the city doing the job it should be doing? In my estimation it’s doing a credible job.”

The Parks

Blanche Park, 3045 Shipping Ave.: The neighborhood playground and dog park remained open after contaminated soil was found in September 2013 because it was almost entirely covered with astro turf. Workers paved a parking area and installed monitoring wells to test groundwater, although no drinking wells are in the neighborhood. Total Cost: $700,000.

Merrie Christmas Park, South Le Jeune Road and Barbarossa Avenue: City workers reopened part of the park in February. Clean-up plans now underway call for digging up a foot to two feet of contaminated soil in the western half of the park where toxic metals are concentrated and using the soil to regrade part of the bowl-shaped park under new design plans. The city also plans to excavate contaminated soil around trees and install rubber mulch and lay recycled rubber mats on playground areas. Any area with contaminated soil will be covered with a liner or two feet of clean fill. Projected Cost: $1.5million.

Curtis Park, 1901 NW 24th Ave.: The city reopened part of the large sports complex, including basketball courts, in June, but has kept areas where contaminated soil is exposed fenced. A clean-up plan was due Sept.17, but has not yet been submitted. Estimated Cost: $4million.

Douglas Park, 2795 SW 37th Ave.: The third park closed after contamination was found at Blanche and Merrie Christmas, the 10-acre park near Coral Gables had high levels of toxic metals from ash in two areas. The city, which will discuss funding clean-up efforts at the park Monday, must submit clean-up plans to the county by Oct.5. The city must also test soil off site to determine the extent of contamination. Projected Cost: $3.5million.

Billy Rolle Domino Park, 3400 Grand Ave.: A neighborhood hangout with shady domino tables, the city is considering installing a liner and new soil as well as a monitoring well. A plan for the clean-up is due Sept.30. Estimated Cost: $250,000.

Southside Park, 100 SW 11th St.: A pocket park near downtown, the city still needs to finish mapping the boundaries of the contamination. A clean-up plan is due Sept.30. Estimated Cost: $1million.

Bayfront Park, 301 Biscayne Blvd.: Part of the downtown park remains fenced, but addressing contamination in the park may be complicated by its terraced design. A clean-up plan is due Oct.6. No cost estimate available.

 

Source: Miami Herald

/by

JPMorgan Chase Bank Coming To Coconut Grove

,

JPMorgan Chase Bank will open a branch in Coconut Grove’s trendy CocoWalk retail, dining and entertaining complex.

The banking giant signed a 10-year lease for 3,117 square feet in CocoWalk, at 3015 Grand Avenue, according to the property owner.

It should open in January. It will occupy GAP’s former first floor space.

According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., only six banks were in the zip code 33133 as of June 30, 2013. This would be Chase Bank’s first location there.

Chase Bank ranked fourth in South Florida deposits with $12.4 billion for a 7.1 percent market share. It had 175 branches here in 2013.

 

Source: SFBJ

 

/by

Board Reviews Controversial Plan For Coconut Grove Waterfront

,

A plan to remake the Coconut Grove waterfront is up for review by Miami’s Historic Preservation Board.

The plan includes the demolition of Scotty’s Landing and the Chart House, and the addition of new boat storage space, restaurants, retail, and a promenade along the water.

Miami voters approved the project last year, although activists claim that the majority of voters in Coconut Grove precincts voted against the proposal. Several lawsuits that could halt the project remain pending.

Arquitectonica is handling architecture and landscape design.

 

Source: exMiami

/by

Courtyard Marriott Could Soon be Condos

,

The Courtyard Miami Downtown, a 233-room Marriott hotel that sits on a prime 1.07-acre site in the heart of the urban core, is up for grabs.

CBRE is marketing the asset, which could be redeveloped into over 1,000 condo units under the Miami 21 zoning code.

CourtyardByMarriott4“This is an extraordinary location in the heart of Miami’s business district, directly between the new landmark All Aboard Florida Miami terminal, Miami Worldcenter and Brickell City Centre projects,” said CBRE vice chairman Robert Given, who is marketing the hotel on behalf of AVR Realty. The Courtyard Miami Downtown is located at 200 SE 2nd Avenue.

Miami’s hotel market  is one of the strongest in the nation, with a June year-to-date average daily rate (ADR) of $202.87, ahead of cities such as San Francisco and Boston, CBRE’s research reports. Meanwhile, luxury condominiums in Downtown Miami are commanding pricing in excess of $1,000 per square foot.

“Extremely high barriers to entry in a dense urban center, coupled with a booming residential and lodging market, make this property a one-of-a-kind investment opportunity,” says CBRE Hotels’ senior vice president Christian Charre. “The city’s current zoning code also allows for consideration of a high-return alternative—a rare chance to carve a new condominium community out of this saturated downtown core.”

A high concentration of class A office space in Brickell and Downtown surround the 13-story Courtyard by Marriott. Premier large-scale mixed-use developments, including Swire’s Brickell City Centre and the Met Miami projects are located within a short walk.

The site is also close to some of South Florida’s most recognizable attractions, including Bayside, American Airlines Arena, Miami Tower, the Port of Miami and Mary Brickell Village. Hotel visitors or condo residents would have quick access to Brickell Avenue, Interstate 95 and Interstate 395.

Given and Charre, along with Paul Weimer and Natalie Castillo of CBRE Hotels, and Gerard Yetming of CBRE’s Institutional Properties group, are marketing the asset.

 

Source: GlobeSt.

/by

America’s First Shopping Mall Is Now Stuffed With Micro Homes

,

In 2008, Rhode Island’s Providence Arcade was in trouble.

Considered America’s first indoor mall, the nearly 200-year-old downtown building closed after struggling to fill its cramped commercial spaces. The arcade needed an overhaul, but few viable options existed: when the possibility of a gut job arose, preservationists raised holy hell. In the end, the shopping center and its snug quarters proved just the right fit for a growing housing trend: micro apartments.

Known as Westminster Arcade when it opened in 1828, the building marked the debut of English indoor shopping concept in the United States. Designed by architects Russell Warren and James Bucklin, the Greek Revival stone structure more resembles a courthouse than a shopping mall, what with its stately Ionic columns and sunlight-filled atrium with its glass gable roof. Shoppers browsed three floors of shops—or at least that was the idea; they never seemed willing to trudge up the stairs to the second and third floors.

The mall was nearly razed in 1944, but preservationists intervened, and it was spared. In 1976, the arcade was designated a National Historic Landmark, though businesses struggled. Even its 1980 renovation didn’t help much, and it ultimately closed in 2008. “It had become economically obsolete,” said J. Michael Abbott, a principal at Northeast Collaborative Architects. “When it was a full shopping center of all three floors, it just wasn’t working. Shops were opening and closing all the time.”

arcademicroapartment3 Oft smaller than a hotel room, micro apartments have grown in popularity in recent years as more people cram into urban areas and housing prices escalate. The concept first gained popularity in European and Asian cities before projects popped up in San Francisco, Chicago, and Boston during the Great Recession. And so, developer Evan Granoff, who bought the Westminster Arcade in 2005, sought to introduce shoebox living to Providence.

The construction practices of yore proved a challenge for the rehabilitation team, led by Northeast Collaborative Architects. “They just laid down some flat rocks and started building on top of those—that was the foundation,” Abbott said. “The building has settled over time. We call that ‘character.'” As a result, the walls had to be shored up, and custom doors and windows were created to fit the uneven contours. The well-worn wood floors and lacelike iron balustrades were left in place.

arcademicroapartment5Work on the $7M project wrapped in October 2013. Granoff retained the retail spaces on the ground floor and rented them to retail busineses. These commercial spaces are enclosed by bay windows so sound doesn’t drift to the residences above. Inspired by ship construction, each of the 38 rental units—which measure from 225 to 300 square feet—includes a bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, and built-in storage. The homes on the second floor even have guest accommodations in the form of a twin Murphy bed. The Providence Arcade also contains eight larger apartments, a game room, storage spaces, and laundry machine.

Micro apartments are not for everyone—in fact, their clientele are “young kinds that just graduated.” They “are at the bottom-end of the totem pole and don’t have that dining room set that grandma gave them,” Abbott said. “They travel really light. They might have a bike and two suitcases.” The Providence Arcade’s dwellings have also attracted keepers of the shops downstairs as well as second homeowners seeking a place to stay when they’re in town. Rent starts at $550 a month, but future residents better get in line—there is already a waitlist.

 

Source: Curbed

/by

Demand Response Keeps Energy Use Low At Chicago High-Rise

, ,

Demand response is an energy-saving tool that encourages customers to shift their electricity use to times of day when there is less demand on the power grid or when more renewable energy is abundant.

Karan Gupta at 77 West Wacker's Central Command Center

Karan Gupta at 77 West Wacker’s Central Command Center

This has been at the core of the work of Karan Gupta, a high-performance building consultant and Environmental Defense Fund Climate Corps fellow based in North Carolina. His host company, Jones Lang Lasalle, is the property manager for 77 West Wacker Drive, a 50-story office building in downtown Chicago. Here, his focus is on maximizing the benefits of demand response, which already have been implemented through multiple technologies.

Currently, 77 West Wacker is enrolled in the PJM demand response capacity market through a demand response service provider. There are standby payments for demand response commitments, meaning that the building is paid for simply making itself available to reduce energy demand when called upon to do so. In addition to these standby payments, the building is paid for with actual energy conservation as real demand falls below baseline demand during emergency events. The building also participates in voluntary price-based demand response, whereby energy conservation is performed in non-emergency events to take advantage of opportunities when real-time energy prices exceed the fixed rate that the building pays for energy.

Load-Shifting Makes It Easier To Bear

The software platform provided by the demand response service provider allows engineers to view the building’s baseline demand, real-time action alerts and forecasts for weather and energy prices. When the grid is stressed due to extreme weather or system lapses, the engineers receive notification, usually the day of, to enact demand response protocols. While extreme weather may or may not result in an emergency event, it almost always presents earnings opportunities through economic demand response.

For this reason, the team here is proactive and monitors weather forecasts throughout the Midwest and East Coast, and usually has taken action by the time emergency notification is received. In the summer, the primary form of action is “load shifting,” a process works by pre-cooling the building during early morning off-peak hours and reducing cooling demand during peak hours.

demandresponse

(Credit: Karan Gupta)

A hypothetical demand response event in which load shifting was used. In this snapshot, the red line represents the baseline and the green line represents actual building use. Actual use exceeded the baseline in the morning hours when building equipment ramped up to pre-cool the building (there is no penalty for going above the baseline during non-peak hours), and then around 10 a.m., the equipment ramped down for the rest of the day as it had to work less hard to maintain the lower temperature. During the period where the green line is below the red line, real-time energy prices are paid back to the building for the difference between baseline energy consumption and actual consumption.

BAS + VFD Spells Comfort’

When a non-weather event occurs, load shifting may not be an option, and instead a series of minor operational adjustments must be made to achieve the necessary reductions. Tenant comfort is an important consideration when making these adjustments, as reasonable temperatures and minimum levels of ventilation have to be maintained. Excessive ramping and cycling of equipment also should be avoided to prevent undue stress and shortened life. Where base building equipment adjustments alone are not sufficient, the building may send out notices for tenant involvement. Effective communication is critical for tenant satisfaction, but to that end, building management has performed exceedingly well, making efforts to educate occupants about the value of demand response.

The two primary technologies that have enabled demand response capability at 77 West Wacker are the building automation system and variable frequency drives. The BAS allows for monitoring and control of the various equipment from a central command center. This control is necessary to quickly enact demand response protocols while guarding the health, safety and comfort of the building occupants. In the past, motor-driven equipment such as fans and pumps either would run at full load or not at all, and when at full load, would be modulated by dampers or fans. A common analogy is using the brakes to control the speed of a car while pushing the accelerator to the limit. VFDs basically provide throttle control and allow for the modulation of such equipment.

Aiming Higher

The next step in fully implementing demand response at 77 West Wacker is enrolling into ancillary services, which are used to support the transmission of electric power from seller to purchaser (scheduling and dispatch, electric grid protection, etc.). While BAS and VFDs are a strong first step, further hardware and software investments will be necessary to make frequency regulation possible. To some extent, real-time control will have to be relinquished to the system operator, but the primary objective still will remain to maintain tenant satisfaction. Automated scripts that guide operational parameters within predefined limits occasionally will have to override signals to ramp loads up or down.

Cracking the code for successful implementation hopefully will release a new wave of revenue for property managers around the country while enhancing grid reliability.

 

Source: GreenBiz

/by