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Moishe Mana and the Mana Group plan a large-scale tech center, anchored by Flagler Street, for downtown Miami, representatives just told the Downtown Development Authority.

“Mana Tech will bring tech and venture capital companies into the city’s core very much at the direction of Moishe Mana,” said Paul Lambert, managing principal of Lambert Advisory. “Flagler Street will be the center, and he plans to re-do the entire block.”

The area, bounded on the east and west by Southeast First and Southwest First avenues and on the north and south by Northwest Second and Southwest Second streets, will contain 11 buildings, most of which already exist and will be renovated.

“A pocket park will be adjacent to one building,” Mr. Lambert said.

The Mana Group, already a presence in Wynwood, began acquiring downtown buildings in 2014; it has been reported that Moishe Mana owns about 45 buildings near Flagler Street now.

“Permits will be pulled shortly to begin renovations, with the earliest of the buildings to be ready in the first quarter of 2021,” Mr. Lambert said.

“There is tech in Miami, but it is isolated, and it’s not working as one,” said Uri Adoni, Mana Tech managing director. “We want this whole area to be about tech, and not just local tech. We want to import start-ups, possibly from South America. Start-ups need services, and that’s what we will supply. Usually, these companies would be based in New York City, but Miami can be a target.”

“This really has the power to be transformative, based on the sheer assets and resources you’re deploying,” said authority board member Philippe Houdard, founding principal of Pipeline Workspaces and Skybank Financial. He asked whether the group has any firm commitments from potential tenants.

“We want a mix of tenants; it can be relatively young start-ups with 50 to 100 employees,” Mr. Adoni said. “We’ve also had initial talks with large corporate tenants, but I can’t say it’s mature yet. Give us any leads you have and we’ll filter them.”

“Flagler is the spine and nervous system of downtown,” said Ken Russell, authority chair and Miami commissioner. “We’re setting the table” with the renovation of Flagler Street itself, which is to resume after the February Super Bowl. That project has been driven by the authority and is being funded by the city, the county, the authority and property owners.

“We want to help you recruit,” he told Mr. Adoni. “And we have a bank account that’s meant to do just that.”

 

Source: Miami Today

An entrepreneur who’s bought a big chunk of downtown Miami while promising some mold-breaking surprises was apparently not kidding: He wants to build an eye-catching 49-story tower with apartments so small there’s no room for ovens in the tiny kitchens. And there’s no parking.

Actually, that last bit’s not quite right. There will be parking — for bicycles. Is Miami really ready for this?

Moving-company and arts mogul Moishe Mana — who’s also building a mini-city on a large swath of Wynwood and has lately spent tens of millions to buy up property on and around downtown’s Flagler Street — certainly thinks so.

A rendering of developer Moishe Mana’s proposed “micro-living” apartment tower. (Zyscovich Architects)

A rendering of developer Moishe Mana’s proposed “micro-living” apartment tower. (Zyscovich Architects)

He’s the first in Miami to formally propose putting up a building consisting entirely of what’s been dubbed “micro-units” — compact, hyper-efficient and affordable apartments meant for young singles who want to live in dense urban neighborhoods and get around primarily on foot and public transit. The plan, which Mana’s team says fully conforms with downtown zoning rules, will have its first and likely only public review before the city’s Urban Design Review Board on Monday

MicroApartments3The blueprint calls for 328 apartments starting at 400 square feet, the minimum allowed by city code. The penthouse units top out at a relatively generous 600 square feet, but most will be 500 square feet and under, said the project’s architect, Bernard Zyscovich.

The apartments would be equipped with built-in furnishings, including beds and tables, that tilt, fold or slide into walls and cabinets, Zyscovich said. And the building, at 200 North Miami Ave., would be flush with amenities, including built-in superfast WiFi and fully equipped common kitchens and dining rooms for when residents want to entertain.

“It’s like living in a Transformer,” Zyscovich said. “The idea was, let’s make these apartments in the urban core, let’s make them small and let’s build in all the stuff that makes it desirable. We’re going for that authentic coolness that comes from being in the middle of everything. It’s for a particular type of person, probably Millenials but not exclusively so, who want to live an urban life and simplify their life, and not have all their money going to rent and furniture and maintaining a car.”

Rents, which have not been set, would be at market rates, but would be significantly lower than the norm downtown and in surrounding neighborhoods like Brickell — where high costs have some renters taking in roommates and doubling up in bedrooms — by virtue of the apartments’ small size. The substantial savings Mana will realize by not having to build costly structured parking will also help keep rents down, Zyscovich said.

A rendering of developer Moishe Mana’s proposed “micro-living” apartment tower. (Zyscovich Architects)

A rendering of developer Moishe Mana’s proposed “micro-living” apartment tower. (Zyscovich Architects)

The project takes advantage of a zoning exemption that allows buildings close to transit stations in downtown Miami to dispense with parking. The building, on a sliver of land that Zyscovich said would make it hard to fit in a parking garage in any case, sits a short stroll from the Government Center Metrorail station, three Metromover stops and the station for the All Aboard Florida train service, now under construction.

There is lots to walk to nearby, including courthouses, government buildings and offices with tens of thousands of jobs, not to mention classes at Miami Dade College’s downtown campus two blocks away. The All Aboard station will have a food market, and Whole Foods and Publix stores can be reached by Metromover or city trolley.

Those who insist on having a car have options: The building site abuts a big city parking garage, and another public garage sits a couple of blocks away.

Two South Florida analysts predicted Mana will have no trouble renting out the building at a time where rents in Miami have risen much faster than salaries, creating a housing affordability crisis.

If Mana rents his apartments in the middle of the range for the area, or about $2.25 a square foot, that means someone could get into one of the 400-square-foot units for $900 a month, a relative bargain, while enjoying the privacy of his or her own space, noted Jack McCabe at McCabe Research in Broward County.

“They will fill it up,” McCabe said even as he expressed surprise at the apartments’ size and lack of fully equipped kitchens — though they will have cooktops. “Affordability is key right now. There is definitely demand for more-affordable rentals without a real kitchen in a cramped apartment that allows you to enjoy the lifestyle in downtown Miami.”

McCabe said the common kitchens, which Zyscovich said would have to be booked in advance, are a desirable feature for many people, and the compact units would not bother many of the South Americans and Europeans now flocking to the city who are used to living in smaller spaces than Americans.

The “micro-living” concept, which is catching on in other U.S. cities like Seattle, San Francisco and New York — the Big Apple’s first such building just opened in the Kip’s Bay neighborhood on the east side of Manhattan — can help solve not just the affordability problem but also relieve traffic congestion, said Suzanne Hollander, a broker and lawyer who teaches at Florida International University’s Hollo School of Real Estate.

“It’s very smart. It’s pioneering,” Hollander said. “Micro units are tiny solutions to big urban problems, and Miami is becoming a big urban city. It gives options to a lot of people who otherwise would not have them, so they can enjoy the urban living we are building.”

Micro-living buildings also carry other potential social benefits that could prove attractive not just to Millenials but also to retirees or business executives who need a pied-a-terre, she added.

“People sleep in a micro-unit. But, really, the whole building is their home,” Hollander said. “And the amenities here are amazing. What they’re trading is space for an A-plus location. This all encourages people to interact not just inside the building, but in the neighborhood, making everything more social.”

Another benefit, she said: Because the units are new and built to code, they are safer alternatives to the unregulated rooms in older homes or apartment houses that are often the only alternative for people on limited incomes.

Micro-units in New York and elsewhere are even smaller than Mana’s, with those in New York’s Carmel Place ranging from 260 to 360 square feet after the city waived its 400-square-foot minimum. That’s something some advocates are pushing to happen in Miami as well.

The no-parking alternative has a longer track record in Miami. Other developers have used the transit exemption to build no-parking residential towers downtown, including Related Group’s Loft buildings, but those units are for sale and tend to be larger. Units at Centro Miami, a high-rise condo tower now nearing completion, also without parking, range from 500 to over 1,111 square feet.

A new city zoning rule also allows for small buildings near transit routes to forgo parking. A small developer has broken ground on townhouse-like apartments without parking in East Little Havana.

Though Mana’s apartments will be small, the tower’s design aims to make a big impression, Zyscovich said. It looks like stacked blocks, with some sides on the west and south screened with a “veil” of metal mesh to shade them from the sun.

“It wants to say, I may filled with micro-units, but I’m cool,” the architect said.

 

Source: Miami Herald

The largest zoning code overhaul in Miami history was given a preliminary green light.

Moishe Mana‘s massive special area plan, a mechanism used for projects of more than 9 acres that permits a developer to mold zoning within existing regulations, nabbed a unanimous OK from city commissioners Thursday evening.

The New York developer is pursuing a sprawling, multi-phase project in Miami‘s once crime-laden industrial neighborhood now known as the Wynwood arts district. The 20-plus acre development requires an overhaul of regulations in the city’s recently established Neighborhood Revitalization District, a zoning code specific to Wynwood intended to keep its arts-oriented environment intact and luxe high-rises out.

Rendering of the Mana Wynwood Special Area Plan proposed by Moishe Mana.

Rendering of the Mana Wynwood Special Area Plan proposed by Moishe Mana.

Labeled Mana Wynwood, the special area plan would be the largest-ever in Miami. It’s with this mechanism that the mega-developers behind Brickell City Centre and Miami’s Design District were able to build, said Iris Escarra, a Miami-based shareholder with Greenberg Traurig. The land use attorney is representing Mana‘s team along with Greenberg shareholder Carlos Lago in Miami.

“We’re taking it to the next level,” Escarra said of the current zoning.

Mana‘s team is planning a major commercial venue centered on arts and culture, with some added residential components.

The anchor attraction will be Mana Contemporary, a museum modeled after the developer’s 300,000-square-foot entertainment venue in New Jersey. A quarter of the land will be kept as open space. Mana Commons, a proposed 2.5-acre park, was likened to Millennium Park in Chicago during Thursday’s meeting.

“This is truly a transformational project,” said Bernard Zyscovich, founder of Zyscovich Architects, the firm designing the venue. “It’s unusual because unlike most of the clients that walk into my office, this is not a project driven by residential development.”

The architect touted the Mana‘s vision in creating jobs via mixed-use commercial space catered to the arts and cultural education.

“Once completed, Mana Wynwood would result in 22,000 direct and indirect full-time jobs,” Zyscovich said.

City commissioners asked the team to include benefits and job opportunities for Overtown residents before bringing the plan for its second reading in late July.

The Wynwood Business Improvement District has worked feverishly with Mana‘s team over the past year to ensure the mega-development is compatible with Wynwood‘s unique character and the most recent zoning.

David Polinsky, a member of the BID‘s board, said the group will back the development subject to three major conditions: The Mana team should support the expansion of the BID to include the western area of the plan; Mana properties bordering Northwest 22nd Avenue, or the “Calle Ocho” of Wynwood, should follow the neighborhood’s current zoning; and the area’s temporary uses should be restricted, including the special events Mana can host, until shovels hit the ground.

 

Source: DBR

The shovels are finally hitting the pavement on Flagler in downtown Miami, nearly two years after city officials agreed to undertake a total reconstruction that’s meant to restore the tatty but storied byway to its rightful place as the city’s glittering Main Street.

Work has just begun on what’s expected to be a two-year, $13 million streetscape project, starting at the Miami-Dade County Courthouse and proceeding in 13 stages all the way to Biscayne Boulevard.

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By the time the job is done, Flagler’s cracked, stained, slanted and narrow sidewalks, its scrawny-to-nonexistent greenery and its notoriously backup-prone gutters will be history, replaced by 150 shady oaks, new lighting and stormwater drains, and sidewalks twice as wide to accommodate the cafe tables and shoppers that the project’s backers expect the new street to attract.

Flagler Street Rendering

Flagler Street Rendering

On Thursday, the Miami City Commission approved the last bit of funding for the project, $920,000 for an upgraded drainage system and removal of old abandoned pipes that have been sitting beneath Flagler Street’s pavement for decades.

Flagler Street Rendering

Flagler Street Rendering

The street project’s timing seems especially fortuitous. It comes as New York entrepreneur and developer Moishe Mana has amassed what the website The Real Deal has tallied at nearly $200 million worth of properties on or abutting Flagler, with the idea of turning the street, which has long functioned as a down-market, discount-shop strip, into a restaurant, cultural and retail destination, all while preserving its historic low scale.

That combination of public improvements and private enterprise is what worked magic in places like Miami Beach’s Ocean Drive and Lincoln Road Mall, where the Flagler Street project’s backers note street and sidewalk improvements set the stage for a dramatic revitalization. That’s what they hope to replicate in downtown Miami.

“It’s really exciting,” said Brian Alonso, whose family owns the upscale La Epoca department store in the historic Walgreens building and the newer Lost Boy Dry Goods clothing shop in the also-historic DuPont building, both on Flagler. “Streetscape projects can transform an area. On Ocean, when you had Tony Goldman assembling property and the streetscape improvements at the same time, you had something transformative. You have something similar happening here. Mana can single-handedly change the area.”

Mana, who recently submitted plans for a massive, ambitious and controversial multi-use redevelopment in Wynwood, has been publicly coy about his precise plans for Flagler. But a video his company released in the fall shows refurbished buildings along Flagler, some occupied by rooftop lounges and restaurants. In the video, Mana calls Flagler Street a “Cinderella” that merely needs a new dress to reveal her beauty.

“Downtown is the future of Miami,” Mana says.

 

Source: Miami Herald