Posts

Bjarke Ingels Group has unveiled designs for a massive mixed-use development that is elevated into the air on thin stilts.

Located in the central Miami neighborhood of Allapattah, an industrial, working-class district mainly comprised of produce suppliers, the major complex will serve as a new landmark destination in the city.

Dubbed Miami Produce, the project will activate the site with urban farming, restaurants, storefronts, co-working offices, co-living apartments and educational programming.

Click here to view inhabitat‘s rendering slideshow of BIG’s Miami Produce project

 

Source: inhabitat

Four developers will seek to rezone property in Miami for major projects, including a 43-story apartment tower by the Melo Group.

The city’s Planning, Zoning and Appeals Board will consider all four applications on March 15. If approved there, the applications would need to pass two readings before the City Commission. These rezoning applications deal with the allowable height and density on the sites, not the specific building designs, which would go through a different approval process.

1. Apartment Building Proposed By Meo Group In Arts & Entertainment District

Miami-based Melo Group, one of the largest residential developers in Miami with its condo and apartment towers, wants to rezone the 1.22-acre site it owns through affiliate Art Plaza LLC in the Arts & Entertainment District. It paid $16 million in 2014 for the property at 1336, 1348 and 1366 N.E. 1st Ave., 50 and 58 N.E. 14th Street, plus 1335 N.E. Miami Court. It’s near where Melo Group is currently building the Square Station apartments.

The area is zoned for 500 units per acre. Attorney Iris Escarra, who represents Melo Group in the application, said it’s not feasible to build to that density level under the site’s current zoning because it doesn’t allow enough square footage. Melo Group intends to build an apartment building with ground-floor commercial space, she said. That location is ideal for Miami workers because it’s near the School Board Station Metro Mover and Melo Group would but a public entrance to encourage mass transit and walking, she added.

The property’s current zoning of T6-24-A would permit a 22-story building of 518,000 square feet with 304 units. Rezoning Art Plaza LLC’s land to T6-24B would allow a 43-story building of 1.28 million square feet with 630 units, according to Escarra’s estimate.

“Square Station has the same zoning,” Escarra said. “This area is really in need of that particular zoning change. It’s important to get people to take the School Board Stop.”

2. Apartment Tower Proposed In Omni

Developers Damian Narvaez and Alex Karakhanian plan to build an apartment building in the Omni neighborhood.

Their co-owned company 2247 N.W. 17th Avenue LLC paid $6.6 million in May 2016 for the 43,262-square-foot site at 1900 N.E. Miami Court. It currently has a 50,317-square-foot building from 1923 that recently housed Aspira Charter School.

The developer seeks to rezone the property from T6-8 to T6-12, which would increase the permitted height from eight stories to 12 stories. The density would remain at 500 units per acre. Attorney Steven Wernick, who represents the developers, said rezoning the property would allow his clients to propose a building closer to the area’s permitted density. If approved, it will design an apartment building with ground floor retail, he said.

“The site is in need of redevelopment to bring more housing into the area,” Wernick said.

Based on an average unit size of 700 square feet, the current zoning would permit a 266,963-square-foot building with 220 units. The new zoning would allow a 444,226-square-foot building with 358 units. Wernick said the final number of units would depend on the design of the building and the size of each unit.

3. MiMo Site Could Be Rezoned

The owner of a 1.33-acre site in MiMo wants to rezone the property for more density.

Todd Leoni manages the three companies 7000 Biscayne LLC, 7100 Biscayne LLC, and 7120 Biscayne that own the property. It covers 7000, 7010, 7020, 7030, 7100, and 7120 Biscayne Blvd. plus 565 N.E. 71st Street. The property currently has a three-story office building, two restaurants and a car wash.

The property is currently zoned T4 and T5. The proposed zoning of T6-8 would allow 85 units. There would be no change in the permitted height, as buildings in the MiMo historic district are limited to 35 feet.

It’s not clear exactly what the developer plans to build. Attorney Gilberto Pastoriza, who represents 7000 Biscayne LLC, couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

4. Mixed-Use Proposed In Allapattah

A mixed-use multifamily project is planned for the emerging neighborhood of Allapattah.

Luar Investments LLC, owned by Raul Rodriguez, owns the 44,442-square-foot site at 2950 N.W. 7th Ave., 720, 730, and 744 N.W. 30th Street, and 735 N.W. 29th Street. It currently has an 8,956-square-foot building that’s used by an ambulance company and the parking lot is utilized for ambulance parking to serve the nearby hospitals.

It’s currently zoned T4 with 36 units per acre. The developer wants it rezoned to T5 with 65 units per acre. This would allow about 48 units on the site.

Miami attorney Ben Fernandez wrote in the application that Luar Investments intends to build a mixed-use multifamily development with ground floor commercial space. He couldn’t be reached for comment.

 

Source: SFBJ

Whether it’s Wynwood, downtown Miami or Miami Beach, commercial developers and brokers are starting to look toward one demographic above all others for how they market and sell their projects: millennials.

So said a panel of industry heavyweights during “Commerical Outlook: Examining the flurry of activity across South Florida’s retail, hospitality and office markets,” at recent The Real Deal’s South Florida Showcase & Forum.

From left: Stuart Elliott, Steven Kamali, Lyle Stern, Keith Menin, Donna Abood and Tony Cho

From left: Stuart Elliott, Steven Kamali, Lyle Stern, Keith Menin, Donna Abood and Tony Cho

Panelists included Donna Abood, principal of Avison Young’s Miami branch; Keith Menin, principal of Menin Hospitality; Tony Cho, president of Metro 1; Lyle Stern, president of the Koniver Stern Group; and Steven Kamali, founder of Hospitality House. TRD‘s Editor-in-Chief Stuart Elliott was the moderator.

“The millennial way of thinking has already started filtering into Miami’s evolving office market,” Abood said. “All Aboard Florida is building more than 800 market-rate rentals right next to its Class A offices as part of the MiamiCentral development in the downtown area. The project also has a built-in transit hub — a detail that helped convince global media company Cisneros to lease 30,000 square feet of office space before the project even opened. They’re speaking millennial languages. These guys don’t want to own cars, they don’t want to own homes.”

Abood added that the overall office market in Miami has been starved of supply, leaving brokers frustrated as potential tenants leave Miami-Dade County for greener pastures.

“We are tight on office space to the extreme,” Abood said. “Condo developers took prime sites that were really meant for offices. Since there’s been a dearth of new construction, the trend has been for investors to scoop up Class C or Class B office buildings and renovate them. Co-working operators like WeWork have also proliferated as smaller businesses and startups seek affordable office space.”

That’s been the case in Wynwood more-so than anywhere else in Miami, where companies have transformed a swath of the neighborhood’s aging warehouses into hip workspaces and shops.

“There’s still a big gap to fill for development in Wynwood. Top-shelf retail space in the neighborhood is pushing $100 per square foot and land prices are rising as a result,” Cho said.

His firm recently brokered the $53.5 million sale of nearly an acre to the Gindi family, which is planning to build a new two-story retail project.

“It won’t be long before Wynwood starts seeing hotel projects,” Cho said. “Wynwood is underserved in terms of hospitality leaving room for one or even several new hotels. Metro 1 is already in talks with several operators.

Outside of Wynwood, Cho said he’s also working on a dual-branded hotel in Brickell that’s geared toward the middle market instead of luxury.

“The first developer is a little bit scared,” Cho said. “But once the first person does it, everybody’s going to follow.”

One major point of fear: Zika, the mosquito-borne virus linked to birth defects, which made landfall in Wynwood earlier this year and wreaked havoc on local businesses as tourists avoided the neighborhood. Cho said the situation was overblown in the media, and that Wynwood’s retail market quickly bounced back once Gov. Rick Scott declared the neighborhood a Zika-free zone in September.

Menin conceded his hospitality firm hunkered down for the Zika fallout amid an already slow summer season, cutting costs as much as possible, paying staff quarterly and offering incentives to guests and events ahead of any drops in occupancy. “For us, we really just watch every dollar and every cent,” he said.

Stern was also keeping his fingers crossed, hoping a cold winter in the Northeast would keep business flowing to South Florida. “Usually around Yom Kippur, we start praying for icebergs in the Hudson,” he said. “That’s not always going to be the case.” He added that though business may be slowing in Miami’s already well-established neighborhoods, Miami River and especially Allapattah are seeing a boom in property sales — and development will likely follow soon.

Stern said two major investors have scooped up almost 20 acres of industrial properties in Allapattah over the past several years, totaling some $40 million in transactions. And with a swath of new national retailers coming to Brickell City Centre and Miami Worldcenter, the surrounding neighborhoods are poised to see a wave of hip street retail and restaurant concepts fill in the gaps.

“If you drew an arc from New York to Chicago to Las Vegas, there’s not another city in that entire arc that has the number of restaurants doing over $8, $10, $12 and $15 million dollars in business that we do in the Miami market,” said Stern.

 

Source: The Real Deal

Roosters crow in trash-strewn lots. Construction crews tear down crumbling foreclosed homes. The din of backhoes, of leaf-blowers, of planes flying overhead never seems to stop.

But in the roughly five-square-mile Allapattah neighborhood of Miami, one of the city’s oldest, home values are rising at a faster clip than the multimillion dollar mansions of Miami Beach.

A house on Northwest 25th Ave in the Allapattah neighborhood of central Miami. Developers and investors are buying properties there because it's close to downtown and on the edge of Wynwood. CHARLES TRAINOR JR MIAMI HERALD STAFF

A house on Northwest 25th Ave in the Allapattah neighborhood of central Miami. Developers and investors are buying properties there because it’s close to downtown and on the edge of Wynwood. CHARLES TRAINOR JR MIAMI HERALD STAFF

In the last year, home values in this working-class community are up nearly 24 percent, according to data collected by online real estate company Zillow. The Miami-Dade County average is 8.6 percent.

The reason for the surprising surge?

A house on Northwest 25th Ave in the Allapattah neighborhood of central Miami. Developers and investors are buying properties there because it's close to downtown and on the edge of Wynwood. CHARLES TRAINOR JR MIAMI HERALD STAFF

A house on Northwest 25th Ave in the Allapattah neighborhood of central Miami. Developers and investors are buying properties there because it’s close to downtown and on the edge of Wynwood. CHARLES TRAINOR JR MIAMI HERALD STAFF

Rock-bottom prices and Allapattah’s proximity to hot-spots like the Design District, Wynwood, the Miami River and the Health District around Jackson Memorial Hospital have investors salivating over the area’s low-end housing stock — and buying up everything they can.

The median value for a single-family home in the area stood at $123,000 in June 2015, the lowest in Miami after Liberty City, Zillow found. For condos and townhomes, values were $103,000.

“There’s so much speculation among investors because the prices are so low,” said Alex Ruiz, a real estate agent at the Keyes Company who grew up in the area in the 1960s and ’70s.

“It was a very booming area when my family was there,” Ruiz said. “There were movie theaters and stores and restaurants all along 36th Street and a Coca Cola Bottling company plant.”

Allapattah, sometimes called Little Santo Domingo because of its large Dominican community, has transformed since its heyday decades ago. Today, most people who live here are low-income renters. Many rely on Section 8 vouchers.

Allapattah9A growing number of homes, all on small lots close together, are being converted for multi-family use. There are few stores beyond pawn shops, car mechanics, corner stores and bare-bones restaurants. Businesses are mainly industrial, with boat yards and drydocks lining the Miami River. Crime is a problem. A shooting left a man dead over a recent weekend.

But Allapattah may again be on the cusp of change.

Investors are snapping up properties with cash, renting them out and waiting for a boom they expect to spread west from the shops and galleries of Midtown and north from the high-rises of the Miami River. It’s hard to find better deals in Miami.

“We can buy a house for $60,000, tear it down for $10,000 and build a duplex for $200,000,” said Jorge Artiles, a realtor and home flipper who works in the neighborhood with bank-owned properties. “Then we can rent it out to two families for $1,700 per month. We are putting the money to work and then we can sell for a profit because the market keeps going up.”

Local realtor and house flipper Jorge Artiles stands outside a property he and business partners recently purchased in Allapattah. CHARLES TRAINOR JR MIAMI HERALD STAFF

Local realtor and house flipper Jorge Artiles stands outside a property he and business partners recently purchased in Allapattah. CHARLES TRAINOR JR MIAMI HERALD STAFF

Artiles said investors are banking on the expectation that in the next 10 to 15 years, Allapattah will be transformed. The area is close to expressways, the airport, downtown and Miami Beach. Along the north bank of the Miami River, young professionals are renting out apartments and condos because of easy access to jobs downtown, Artiles said.

“We’re trying to brand this area as the Miami River District,” Artiles said. “That’s what it is on the south side of the river. But if I say Allapattah, I cannot charge $2,400 for a unit.”

One sign of the area’s potential for developers: A major mixed-use project called River Landing is planned for the river’s north bank near the Health District, although it may be slowed by creditors.

Realtors are seeing interest along Allapattah’s eastern edge, too.

“It’s right next to the Design District and it’s very affordable,” said Paola Chapman, a real estate agent who just took her first Allapattah listing because of rising values.

For homeowners in the area, change cuts both ways. Locals welcome rising real estate values, said Albena Sumner, president of the Allapatah Homeowners’ Association and a resident since 1965. But transient renters bring a different feel to the community.

“Where you used to have a family owning a home, now you’re renting out a duplex,” Sumner said. “It’s gentrification. It’s what happens in poor communities. It happened in Wynwood. Now it’s happening here.”

Background (Source – Zillow):

  • A working-class, industrial neighborhood where home values are rising faster than any other part of Miami or Miami Beach, driven by investors and flippers. The name Allapattah comes from the Seminole word for “alligator.” Its boundaries are State Road 112 and the Miami River to the north and south, and Interstate 95 and Northwest 27th Avenue on the east and west. Allapattah covers several ZIP codes, including 33136, 33125, 33127 and 33142. Crime statistics and Florida Department of Education school ratings vary by location but are generally poor.
  • Median single-family home values: $123,000 in June, up 29 percent since June 2014.
  • Median condo/townhome values: $103,000 in June, up 23 percent since June 2014.

 

Source: Miami Herald