Rendering of South River Station, Babba Joshua Yesharin and the current site

Miami real estate investor Babba Joshua Yesharim paid $3.2 million for a site across the street from the Miami River with plans for redevelopment, as the area continues to overflow with new projects.

The parcel, at 490 Northwest South River Drive also includes a second small site at 442 Northwest South River Drive, Yesharim told The Real Deal. Together, they span 30,094 square feet of land and currently house 17,069 square feet of warehouses, built in 1949. The price equates to $187 per square foot for the warehouses and $106 per square foot for the land.

The sale was an off-market deal. Fernando Arencibia was the broker, Yesharim said.

Records show the seller, United Resources Inc., had purchased the property in 2008 for $1.428 million.

Yesharim said he has plans to rehab the building and name it South River Station. Current warehouse tenants include UAG Construction and Tri County Propeller Service, and an additional 8,000 square feet is available for lease at $35 per square foot, triple net, he said. Currently, Yesharim is in talks with a deli-style restaurant, a Spanish market, a recording studio and a boxing gym for the space. He is also interested in bringing in creative office tenants.

“That property is right in the middle of what is going to be the district and it’s an important piece of the puzzle,” he told TRD. “I’m trying to make the Miami River District a destination for food, drink and entertainment.”

In four years, when the existing tenants’ leases expire, Yesharim said he plans to redevelop the property as as a high-rise apartment building.

He said his goal is to create the Meatpacking District of Miami. “It’s on the cutting edge of what is going to be the next area,” he said. “It’s not a question of if, but when, and I want to be the person to make it happen.”

Yesharim has several holdings in the Miami River area, including the properties leased by restaurants Seaspice and Crust, and the block between 300 and 370 Northwest Eighth Avenue, which was historically a bar and nightclub, and is available for lease. He also owns 321 Northwest 8th Avenue and 340 Northwest South River Drive, as well as the Anchor Marine property at 961 Northwest Seventh Street, where Henry Greenberg plans an 8,000-square-foot, 300-seat restaurant with a large outdoor terrace and covered boat slips. Greenberg is part of a group called the Restaurant Syndicate that owns nine restaurants in Moscow. The Miami restaurant would be the group’s first in the United States.

Nearby, Shahab Karmely and Alex von Furstenberg paid $5.4 million for the River Arts Building at 131 Northwest South River Drive on the Miami River last June, with plans to launch a new restaurant with entertainment and event space. The property, on the south side of the river and across from Lummus Park, is less than a mile away from Karmely’s planned One River Point, a 60-story luxury condominium designed by architect Rafael Viñoly that will be built along the Miami River.

So far, both planned restaurants have run into opposition for approval. Citing a need to preserve marine related businesses, the Miami River Commission in January voted to recommend that the city of Miami deny waivers being sought by both Greenberg’s group and KAR Properties to convert industrial land for commercial use for restaurants. The city has yet to vote on the issue.

Meanwhile the Miami River is spilling over with other new projects, including new restaurants, retail, offices and residential developments. River Yacht Club, a restaurant and boat marina at 401 Southwest Third Avenue, owned and developed by the Chetrit Group and Dupoux Partners, opened last year.

In addition to One River Point, Chetrit Group, Ari Pearl and JDS Development Group are planning to build a mixed-used project that includes four towers, a hotel, shops, restaurants, and a public river walk with boat slips.

Louise Sunshine, Shahab Karmely, Tim Elmes, Peggy Fucci and Gonzalo Navarro

The countdown is on for The Real Deal South Florida’s third annual Broward Real Estate Showcase & Forum on April 20.

Our speaker confirmations are rolling in, and we’re pleased to announce industry veteran Louise Sunshine, New York developer Shahab Karmely and some of the region’s top real estate movers and shakers are among the notable speakers.

More than 3,000 of South Florida’s biggest names – from brokers, developers and designers to investors and homebuyers – will be treated to an in-depth look at new developments and industry products while networking with top real estate investors and professionals.

Confirmed panelists include:

• Louise Sunshine, Fort Partners, founder of The Sunshine Group
• Shahab Karmely, KAR Properties
• Tim Elmes, Coldwell Banker
• Peggy Fucci, OneWorld Properties
• Gonzalo Navarro, ArX Solutions

The event will take place at the Design Center of the Americas in Dania Beach from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. on April 20. Get tickets here.

Panel topics include:

• The economics of development amid a new administration and continuing global market uncertainty
• Looking at how technology — including easy access to big data — will transform the South Florida real estate industry
• The future of the residential market in Broward as we hit the post-peak segment of the cycle

All attendees will receive a copy of the now quarterly South Florida Magazine. Check out the October edition of the South Florida Market Report here.

For sponsorship opportunities email forum@therealdeal.com or call 305-740-1211 to reserve your spot now.

Porsche Design Tower

A wealthy Polish investor has upgraded to a new home at Porsche Design Tower in Sunny Isles Beach. 

Records show AD Royale, a company controlled by Dariusz Robert Wojdyga and his wife Agnieszka Gasior, paid $6.7 million for unit 3605 at Porsche Design. The couple lives in a unit at Trump Royale, also in Sunny Isles.

Peaceful night….

A post shared by Agnieszka Gąsior (@agaga25) on Dec 17, 2016 at 6:43pm PST

Wojdyga ranked 86th in the top 100 richest Poles in 2012, according to Forbes. He sold his majority ownership in Hoopa, a Poland beverage company, for 230 million Polish Zlotys in 2008, according to the Bonnier publication Business Polska. Today that equates to more than $56 million in the U.S.

Wojdyga also has a stake in Opera TFI, an investment manager, Polish travel website Wakacje.pl and baby products company EcoWipes, also based in Poland, according to Business Polska.

At Porsche Design Tower, the couple joins owners who include the daughter of an alleged mobster, who paid $5.2 million for unit 1505; Russian Chingiz Askerov, who owns commercial and residential real estate in Moscow like the Domodedova Shopping Mall and paid $5 million for unit 1605; and Mexican billionaire Carlos Peralta Quintero, who paid $6.54 million for unit 1101.

Some are also looking to profit from their recent purchases. Last month, a buyer listed a unit she closed on in December for $7 million, seeking to flip it for $10 million.

Records show 102 unit closings have been recorded in Miami-Dade County records since the building nabbed its TCO in November. Dezer Development launched sales for the tower in 2012. Porsche Design, which is known for its patented car elevator called the “Dezervator,” has an estimated $840 million sellout.

Developer Gil Dezer plans to launch another car-branded condo tower soon, he told TRD last year.

Clockwise from top left: Portico, Artesia and Metropica

Incorporated in 1961, Sunrise started off as a golfing community for retired snowbirds developed by an Iowa-born builder named Norman Johnson. He paid $9 million for 2,650 acres in the western fringes of Broward County.

Today, Sunrise has evolved into a bustling urban center home to national corporations – the regional headquarters for HBO Latin America, Blackberry, and Emerson are all in the city – and boasts one of the most visited malls in the country. In 1990, the now defunct Mills Corporation opened the first phase of Sawgrass Mills Mall, which has since grown to over 2 million square feet of name-brand retailers, restaurants and entertainment venues, and attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors every year.

Sunrise is also home to the BB&T Center, the second largest arena in the nation and the home of the Florida Panthers.

Signs of change

When American Express decided to swipe into Sunrise to build its South Florida regional headquarters, the credit card giant plunked down $21 million for a development site on the corner of Northwest 136th Street and Sunrise Boulevard.

In January, the first wave of Amex employees moved into the new digs, a 400,000-square-foot structure divided into two modern glass-sided buildings joined by an atrium. The company, which will eventually house 3,000 employees at the complex, spent about $200 million on development.

“American Express is going to create a wonderful increase in the daytime population, which is obviously a good thing for the restaurants and retail that surrounds it,” said David Gott, general manager of Sawgrass Mills, which is owned by Simon Property Group. “There is an increase of people moving into the area that gives us a new population to draw from.”

Demographics

Population: 91,256 in 2014 (up 6.4 percent from 2000)

Median age: 38

Median income: $55,957

Average household net worth: $437,087

Getting there

Broward County transit has several routes that serve Sunrise and Miami-Dade County provides public express shuttle services to Sawgrass Mills. The city is in close proximity to the Florida Turnpike and I-95, and is bordered by the Sawgrass Expressway, I-75 and I-595.

Priciest residential sale

$315,000: A 3,118-square-foot single-family home at 1860 Northwest 58th Terrace, with two bedrooms and two baths, sold Jan 20.

Priciest listing

$299,900: A 2,970-square-foot single-family home at 2021 Northwest 64th Avenue, with three bedrooms and four bathrooms

Cheapest listing

$30,600: A 946-square-foot, two-bedroom, two-bath unit at 7500 Northwest 30th Place

Price trends

Median sales price per square foot: $137, 33 percent lower than Broward average

Increase in average rent over last year: 10 percent to $1,800

Developments to watch

In August, Minto Communities launched sales for 123 townhomes at Artesia, the final phase of a 76-acre master planned community that kicked off in 2004. Artesia is located just north of Sawgrass Mills with more than 800 condos and townhouses. The last batch of townhomes range in price from the mid–$300,000s to the $500,000s.

In December, Richman Property Services officially opened Portico, a five-story residential tower with 415 rental apartments at 1941 Northwest 136th Avenue, across the street from Sawgrass Mills. The building offers studios, one-bedroom, two-bedroom and three-bedroom units priced between $1,500 to $2,500 a month. Portico’s amenities include a fitness center with a private yoga and spin studio, as well as 24/7 access to a personal trainer. Other building perks include a doggie park, media and gaming gallery, an electric car charging station, a meditation room and a resort pool overlooking the lake.

“It is a planned community with millennials and Generation Xers in mind,” said Kristen Gucwam, vice president of marketing for Richman.“Building Portico in Sunrise was a no-brainer for us. The city has built-in walkability. It has shopping, dining and the urban feel our residents seek.”

Many market observers have their eyes trained on Metropica, a $1.5 billion mixed-use development planned for 65 acres abutting Sawgrass Mills. KGH International Development, a division of K-Group Holdings, is planning to build 2,250 residential units, 400,000 square feet of retail, dining and entertainment, and 650,000 square feet of office, hotel and cultural space.

Joseph Kavana, KGH president and CEO, said Sunrise is poised for major growth. “There is a migration from east to west,” Kavana, who started assembling the land for Metropica in the 1990s, said. “A lot of people are coming this way because they can get better housing for a lesser price.”

Turtle Crossing shopping center

Davie-based Ross Realty Investments purchased portions of a Coral Springs shopping center for $27.35 million.

The Turtle Run Venture LLC sold the properties at 5760, 5840 and 5860 Wiles Road; and 4180 and 4210 North State Road 7, called Turtle Crossing, in the Turtle Run neighborhood of Coral Springs, records show. The seller is an affiliate of Starwood Capital Group’s LNR Property.

The buildings total 104,321 square feet and the land totals 554,755 square feet, which means this most recent sale breaks down to about $262 per square foot and $49 per foot, respectively. The buildings were completed between 2008 and 2014 and listed with CREC, according to a flier. They are nearly 89 percent occupied.

Tenants include Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Panda Express, Gyromania Grill, AutoZone, Panera Bread, GameStop and Chipotle Mexican Grill. The deal does not include the 174,000-square-foot Super Target in the middle of the property at 440 North State Road 7.

The buyer, Ross Realty Investments, bought the property along with SunCap Real Estate Investments, according to its website. The commercial real estate firm focuses on community shopping centers, neighborhood grocery-anchored centers, power centers, stand-alone retailers and office buildings.

Ross Realty and SunCap financed the deal with a $19.14 million mortgage from Continental Casualty Company.

In June, a company led by investor William Wiener paid nearly $18 million for the Plaza at Coral Springs, a similarly sized, 96,280-square-foot shopping center with tenants that included Broward Kidney Centers, Frank Theatres and Outback Steakhouse.

Rendering of building and Naeem Khan

Three years after announcing he would leave the Big Apple for the Magic City, fashion magnate Naeem Khan unveiled an updated design for his couture house on the Miami River.

During its regular monthly meeting Monday afternoon, the Miami River Commission approved modifications to Khan’s project, which will entail two buildings that will house his corporate headquarters, a manufacturing facility and a fashion school on waterfront land the fashion designer is leasing from Miami-Dade County.

“The whole idea behind building a fashion house is to build a whole new industry [to Miami,]” Khan told the 18-member board. “We want to bring high-end jobs that pay over $50,000. The couture I make is a dying art. We want to train as many people as we can.”

The Miami River Commission originally approved Khan’s preliminary plans in 2015, a requirement for a $1.5 million grant his company received from Miami-Dade to build a public riverwalk and new seawall on the property located at 1175 Northwest South River Drive. Khan inked a 90-year lease deal with the county in 2014 that works out to about $65,000 a year.

Under Khan’s original design, the two buildings were connected and the riverwalk was not included. The updated plans show the buildings are no longer connected and are separated by a tree-lined path that will be used as a runway for fashion shows at the site, said project architect Alfonso Jurado, a vice-president of Arquitectonica.

“From a design perspective, there are substantial changes to the skin of the project,” Jurado said. “We are now looking at a skin that is precast.”

Jurado said the project team is also working on an agreement with the Florida Department of Transportation to extend the property’s portion of the riverwalk to the bridge on Northwest 12th Avenue. Khan is also entering negotiations with Miami’s fire department to lease city property under the bridge currently used to store discarded vehicles and equipment, said his lobbyist Rosario Kennedy. “It has been an eyesore to everyone,” Kennedy said. “We will use it for offsite parking.”

In addition, the site will have a dock where cargo ships will bring in fabrics and other clothes making materials, as well as export clothes made at his manufacturing facility, Khan said.

“The dock will be used to bring products in and out, as well as clients,” he added. “It is going to be beautiful.”

Khan, who has dressed Beyoncé and Michelle Obama, makes a consumer line of high-end fashion ball and bridal gowns sold at luxury department stores like Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom. His company has about 120 employees in New York.

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Jared Kushner and 229 West 43rd Street

From the New York website: The White House recently confirmed that Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and perhaps his closest adviser, would hold on to some of his real estate assets. Kushner, who stepped down as head of Kushner Companies, has so far declined to provide a comprehensive list of what he will and will not keep. But a loan document reviewed by real estate attorneys for The Real Deal suggests that he is still tied up in at least one major piece of the Kushner Companies property empire: a retail condo at the base of the former New York Times building for which the firm paid $295 million.

Kushner Companies purchased the 250,000-square-foot retail condo at 229 West 43rd Street from Lev Leviev’s Africa Israel Investments in 2015.  In October 2016, the firm refinanced the property with a $370 million loan package, consisting of a $285 million senior note from Deutsche bank and an $85 million mezzanine loan from SL Green Realty, loan documents show. That Deutsche loan was later assigned to a Deutsche subsidiary, German American Capital, which currently holds the debt. And according to a recent securities prospectus obtained from Trepp, Jared, along with his brother Joshua, is expected to continue as a guarantor of that loan, even though Jared has joined the Trump administration.

“It is currently anticipated that Jared Kushner will be replaced by Joshua Kushner as the manager of the indirect owner of the borrower,” the January prospectus reads “and the 229 West 43rd Street Retail Condo Loan documents will be amended to provide that both Jared Kushner and Joshua Kushner will be guarantors under the non-recourse carveout guaranty and will individually and collectively constitute key principals for purposes of such documents. However, such proposal is not final and may be subject to further change.”

The prospectus also shows that Jared had previously requested that he be replaced by Joshua as the new guarantor. Despite this, the sponsors of the CMBS offering “anticipate” both brothers will have to personally guarantee a special carveout of the loan agreement.

Attorneys who reviewed the prospectus language for TRD said that if the proposal held, Jared’s guarantor status would allow the Deutsche subsidiary to sue him for so-called “bad boy acts,” which depending on the terms of the guaranty can include things such as criminal actions committed by the property’s managers, attempts to declare bankruptcy, or even transactions made that require the consent of the lender but are done without that consent.

“Most loans are non-recourse, meaning the lender can only go after the collateral,” said one real estate attorney, speaking on condition of anonymity. “But the exception to the non-recourse nature of this loan is they can sue Jared Kushner or Joshua Kushner if one of them or the borrower or anyone else that’s involved with the loan does anything on the list of really bad things.”

This type of arrangement is very common, sources said. What is more unusual, of course, is that a guarantor of a $285 million loan works at the White House and advises the president on matters ranging from national security to financial regulation.

The 229 West 43rd Street loan language indicates that Jared has resigned from his management position in the operating company, consistent with his January announcement that he would resign. But the language says nothing about any change in Jared’s ownership in the property or in the borrowing entity.

“It’s likely that he’s still an owner because it’s just saying he’s being replaced as the manager,” said another attorney, requesting anonymity to comment on a specific company and landlord. “The manager is not necessarily an owner. A manager is more like a president or vice president or secretary.”

While it’s possible that lenders could still want Jared to guarantee the loan even if he no longer owned any of the underlying property, if Jared has no economic interest – such as an ownership stake – in 229 West 43rd Street, it might be difficult to enforce such a guaranty, attorneys said.

“You would think that if he’s staying on as a guarantor that he intends to have some interest, but there’s no way you can know that for sure,” one attorney said.

Attorneys also said it was not clear what it meant that Jared would remain a “key principal” for loan purposes.

A spokesperson for Jared and Kushner Companies declined to comment. Representatives for Deutsche Bank did not respond to a request for comment.

As TRD has reported, personal loan guarantees make it tricky for the president to disengage from his real estate assets, too. Non-recourse loan agreements sometimes come with a list of “prohibited transfers” which can prevent debtors such as Trump or Jared from selling significant stakes in a borrowing entity or giving up control of a borrowing entity.

In December, Deutsche Bank announced it was working on a restructuring of more than $300 million in Trump’s debt, in an effort to avoid potential conflicts of interest. The Guardian later reported that Deutsche had conducted a review of Deutsche accounts tied to Trump, Jared and Ivanka Trump for traces of ties to Russia, but ultimately came up with nothing.

Jared announced his divestment plan in January, declaring he would sell his stake in Kushner Companies’ trophy 666 Fifth Avenue and in more than 35 other assets, including some sales to his brother Joshua and to a trust controlled by his mother, Seryl. The White House later clarified that these 35 would not include all of Jared’s real estate holdings, meaning he will keep some of them, as ProPublica reported. In February, Jared announced he would recuse himself from policy discussions of low-income rental subsidies due to Kushner Companies’ 17-building apartment portfolio in Maryland, which includes properties that receive government money in the form of housing vouchers.

As for Trump, he has placed the majority of his New York assets in a revocable trust of which he is the exclusive beneficiary – an arrangement that many ethics experts and estate attorneys do not consider a real divestment.

Riva in Fort Lauderdale recently hit a key construction milestone – topping off at 15 stories.

Developer Bradley Deckelbaum hosted more than 200 real estate agents, city and county officials, future residents and others at post-topping off celebration in late February.

Riva broke ground in June 2015 and will be delivered this summer, according to a press release. The 100-unit building, at 1180 North Federal Highway, features units ranging from 1,500 square feet to 2,500 square feet, and penthouses up to 7,000 square feet. According to ISG’s fall report, sales at Riva stood at 60 percent. Prices range from the $700,000s to more than $3 million.

Falkanger Snyder Martineau & Yates designed the building, which will have a 400-foot-long landscaped river walk, a water taxi, water sports center with a private dock, 65-foot lap pool and sundeck, river view fitness center and a spa.

Moss & Associates is the general contractor. – Katherine Kallergis

Saudi Arabia King Salman bin Abdulaziz and Adam Neumann

From the New York website: A Japanese fund reportedly in talks to invest up to $4 billion in WeWork is heavily backed by sovereign wealth from Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries, according to a new report.

The Saudi government invested $45 billion in SoftBank’s $100 billion Vision Fund, and government-tied entities from Abu Dhabi and Qatar are also in talks to invest, according to the New York Times.

SoftBank is in talks to invest $2 billion in the national co-working company WeWork, along with potential further investment rounds that could bring the total commitment to almost $4 billion. The money would reportedly most likely come from SoftBank’s Vision Fund, which specializes in tech investments.

The Times reported that Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Development, which owns a stake in the Park Lane Hotel, is mulling a $15 billion investment in the fund.  [NYT] — Konrad Putzier

12300 Northwest 32nd Avenue

Prologis just picked up a distribution warehouse near Opa-locka for $25.75 million.

Records show Futernick Associates sold the 343,553-square-foot building at 12300 Northwest 32nd Avenue in Miami to an affiliate of the San Francisco-based real estate investment trust. Futernick is managed by Frank Futernick of Miami.

The building, built in 1981, sits on a 12-acre lot within the Gratigny Industrial Park. It’s leased to Iberia Foods. The previous sale price was not available online. 

This deal breaks down to about $75 per square foot. No financing was recorded.

Prologis is the largest owner of industrial real estate in the world, according to its website. The company has been active in South Florida in recent years, and more so on the selling end in 2016. Prologis sold a portfolio of properties in Broward and Palm Beach counties last year for $38 million to Aventura investment firm Adler Kawa. In Miami, the REIT also sold a 30-acre development site west of Miami International Airport to UPS for $31 million.

In 2015, Prologis spent more than $407 million to acquire 23 properties in Broward County.

Rendering of the Bristol and developer Al Adelson

Updated 2:45 p.m., March 7: The developers of the Bristol in West Palm Beach have closed a $206 million construction loan.

Records show Flagler Investors LLC secured the financing from the Blackstone Group’s BREDS III Loan Holdings LLC. The developers are Al Adelson, principal of Flagler Investors, and Gene Golub of Chicago-based Golub, who broke ground on the 25-story tower at 1100 South Flagler Drive in May.

“Financing for a condo project in South Florida is not easy when part of the Miami market, the Fort Lauderdale market. The fact that they were willing to lend us a construction loan really speaks to the project, to how good it is and well respected it is,” Adelson said.

HFF’s Scott Wadler along with Jim Dockerty arranged the loan on behalf of Golub. Wadler said the project had interest from multiple lenders, and that it was successful in securing a large construction loan because West Palm Beach has high barriers to entry. “It’s the only luxury high-rise development getting developed in Palm Beach County,” Wadler told The Real Deal.

In West Palm Beach, other projects under construction include the Banyan Cay Resort at 3200 North Congress Avenue, which will feature residences.

Flagler Investors LLC closed on the financing on Friday, he said.

The 69-unit building is selling at prices ranging from $5 million to $30 million with sales pushing 70 percent, Adelson said. Buyers hail from Palm Beach, West Palm, Jupiter, Wellington and Boca Raton, and from the East Coast, Chicago, Detroit and other U.S. cities. It’s following the standard 50 percent deposit structure seen in most Miami projects and many in Broward County, and has more than $300 million in sales so far, Wadler said. The total sellout is $551.5 million, according to the New York Attorney General’s Real Estate Finance Bureau.

In an effort to attract new buyers, the developers spent $100,000 to run a 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl. Adelson said he plans to run a similar commercial costing $150,000 to run during the Masters Tournament in April.

The Bristol is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2018. Douglas Elliman is handling sales. Units range from 3,700 square feet to 14,000 square feet, and the building will front the Intracoastal Waterway.

Suffolk Construction is the general contractor. Willoughby Construction and Shapiro Pertnoy were both tapped to handle custom buildouts.

Flagler Investors paid $21 million for the waterfront development site in July 2014. The 3.21-acre property is directly across the street from the First Baptist Church of West Palm Beach, which had previously used the property as an outdoor stadium, according to Palm Beach County property records.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the general contractor. Suffolk is the general contractor.

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Condo sales in Miami-Dade made big gains last week.

More units sold for a higher total sales volume in the county last week compared to the previous week, and all of the top 10 sales were above the $1 million luxury threshold.

The most expensive condo sale last week was for two units at the Continuum South tower in Miami Beach. New York hedge funder Jonathan Pollock of Elliott Management sold units 3407 and 3402 for a combined $10 million to the same seller, a corporation managed by Christopher Steven Smith of Las Vegas. Mark Zilbert, president of Brown Harris Stevens Zilbert, was the listing agent. The condos were sold furnished for an average of $2,105 per square foot. They were listed together for about three months.

The second priciest unit to sell in Miami-Dade was unit 5391 at Bayview Fisher Island. Coldwell Banker’s Jill Eber, of the Jills, represented the seller of the 6,470-square-foot condo. It traded hands for $8.1 million, or $1,252 per square foot, after 81 days on the market.

The county saw 203 condos sell last week for nearly $86 million. That marks a big bump in total sales volume from the previous week’s $46 million. Average prices were about $422,000 per unit and $280 per square foot.

Closing prices in the top nine deals ranged from $1.55 million to a combined $10 million.

Here’s a breakdown of the data for the week of Feb. 26 to March 4 Click on the map for more information:

Most expensive

Continuum South #3407 and #3402, Miami Beach | 91 days on market | $10M | $2,105 psf | Listing agent: Mark Zilbert of Brown Harris Stevens Zilbert

Least expensive 

Marea South Beach #304, Miami Beach | 538 days on market | $1.55M | $1,016 psf | Listing agent: Linette Guerra of La Playa Properties Group

Most days on market

Marea South Beach #304, Miami Beach | 538 days on market | $1.55M | $1,016 psf | Listing agent: Linette Guerra of La Playa Properties Group

Least days on market

The Gables Club #7C, Coral Gables | 34 days on market | $1.9M | $640 psf | Listing agent: Blanca Byrne of Keller Williams

Renderings of Monad Terrace. Inset: Michael Stern (Credit: STUDIO SCRIVO)

Monad Terrace, a 59-unit luxury condominium designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jean Nouvel, will have a new entrance and lobby designed to enhance its striking architecture.

The Miami Beach Design Review Board on Tuesday approved plans for a double height lobby and porte-cochère lobby for the building located at 1300 Monad Terrace in South Beach. The entrance and lobby will face Biscayne Bay and, to compensate for adding height to the lobby, an additional floor of space will be added to the rear of the second structure of the complex.

The board approved the design of the building last May and Tuesday’s design modifications are expected to be the final changes before construction begins shortly.

Last month, New York developer Michael Stern’s JDS Development Group launched sales at Monad Terrace with prices starting at $2 million for units ranging from two to five bedrooms. Stern said in February that Monad Terrace is targeting buyers who “appreciate great design and architecture, including empty nesters, New Yorkers and Canadians.

The building, which faces the water, is designed to take advantage of light reflecting off Biscayne Bay. Luxury amenities like custom kitchens, terraces with climbing gardens, and marble bathrooms will be included in the units.

Monad Terrace is Stern’s first project on Miami Beach. He is co- developing Echo Brickell, and Echo Aventura as well as other projects in Wynwood/Edgewater.

JDS is developing Monad Terrace in partnership with New Valley, an investment group owned by the Vector Group, which owns Douglas Elliman, Ackerman Development and Mink Development. Elliman is the broker for the project. Kobi Karp is collaborating with Nouvel on the design.

Rendering of Paramount Miami Worldcenter. Inset: developer Dan Kodsi

Developer Dan Kodsi closed on a massive $285 million construction loan for Paramount Miami Worldcenter, marking the second biggest condo construction loan to close in Miami-Dade over the past two years. 

Inbursa Bank provided $170 million and BC Immigration Fund provided $115 million in financing for Paramount, a 60-story, 562-unit tower at Miami Worldcenter. BC Immigration Fund is a Crown corporation that manages and invests funds from British Columbia, Canada’s federal immigrant investor program. Paramount Ventures, which includes Kodsi and Worldcenter developers Art Falcone and Nitin Motwani, is the developer.

The loan is the second largest behind a $305 million construction loan for the Residences by Armani/Casa in Sunny Isles Beach, according to county records. Dezer Development and the Related Group secured their financing from Wells Fargo and the Blackstone Group in July.

It’s become increasingly difficult for South Florida condo developers to secure construction loans over the past year or two. Paramount Ventures went to market for a construction loan last year, Kodsi told The Real Deal.

“It wasn’t easy. If we started the process today, it would have been much tougher,” Kodsi said. “When lenders looked at the entire package, this deal was worth doing. If you just had a one-off condo anywhere really, it would have been tough.”

Walker & Dunlop managing directors Kevin O’Grady, Dan Sheehan and Eric McGlynn, who were with Cohen Financial at the time, worked on the financing for Paramount. The financing will also fund construction of the high street retail promenade underneath the condo building. Martin Schwartz, a Bilzin Sumberg partner, represented Paramount.

Sales are nearing 60 percent at Paramount with seven to 10 units selling on a monthly basis, Kodsi said. Buyers hail from more than 40 countries, including China and Turkey. Units range from 1,180 square feet to 2,350 square feet, with prices averaging $750 per square foot. Amenities will include a 4-acre deck filled with an outdoor soccer field, two tennis courts, a boxing studio, “jam room” and private bungalows.

Construction crews broke ground on the 700-foot tower a year ago and are completing the fifth floor. CoastalTishman, a joint venture between Coastal Construction Group and AECOM Tishman, is the general contractor. Kodsi expects the building to open between December 2018 and January 2019. A Kodsi-led LLC paid about $26 million for the 2.25-acre site in October.

After Paramount Miami Worldcenter and Paramount Fort Lauderdale are completed, the developer said he’s planning to expand the brand further in Miami and in other parts of the state.

The Miami tower is one piece of the Miami Worldcenter puzzle.

Paramount will sit directly next to Worldcenter’s 450,000 square feet of high street retail space, and the project as a whole will also feature the Seventh Street Apartments, an additional 429-unit apartment building, and the 1,700-room Marriott Marquis Miami Worldcenter Hotel & Expo. On Monday, MDM Development Group paid $45 million for the land for the convention center hotel, which is slated to bring 1,700 hotel rooms to the area.

And last week, the Miami Worldcenter’s community development district announced it issued private placement bonds that will fund $74 million of infrastructure upgrades to the 27-acre site.

Unit 801 at the Residences of the Miami Beach Edition and Darin Tansey

A New York couple just paid $5 million for a condo at the Residences of the Miami Beach Edition. The unit had been on the market for more than two years, originally priced at $6.995 million.

Records show Alison Mass and her husband Salvatore Bommarito, with a Park Avenue address in New York, bought unit 801 at the Edition, at 2901 Collins Avenue. The last asking price was $5.5 million, said Darin Tansey of Douglas Elliman, who listed the property for the seller, Marriott International. Ian Schrager and Marriott developed the Edition, which opened in late 2014.

“In 2016 in Miami Beach in the $4 million to $6 million range there were very few closings…,” Tansey said “Finally we did have a price reduction in 2016 with the election year, fluctuations in our national stock market, global currency [issues] and losing major countries like Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela.”

Lourdes Gutierrez of Compass represented the buyers. Mass is an investment banker at Goldman Sachs and Bommarito is now an author after 30 years in investment banking.

The three-bedroom, three-and-a-half bath unit spans 2,756 square feet and has a private lobby elevator. The building has just one unit per floor. The price breaks down to $1,814 per square foot.

Tansey had started selling the Edition condos for Douglas Elliman when they first hit the market in 2014, and was later sales director. He said this was the fifth unit he has sold.

He said the buyers were drawn to the open floor plan, the separated bedrooms, the private elevator lobby and the direct ocean views. “For those who don’t live in Miami having that direct ocean view is always important,” Tansey said. 

One Sotheby’s International Realty replaced Elliman in early February, taking over the remaining developer inventory at the Edition, but Tansey said this deal was already in the works. Four of 24 developer units currently remain on the market. Adjacent to the condos, the Edition’s hotel portion has 293 hotel rooms. Shortly after the hotel was completed, Marriott sold it to the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority for $230 million.

Other unit owners at the Edition include Schrager, who paid $5.5 million for a 2,268-square-foot penthouse in March of last year, and Bollywood actress and businesswoman Poonam Khubani, who re-listed her penthouse with the Jills for $26 million, or nearly $5,000 per square foot.

A 2012 photo of the Brickell skyline taken from the Rickenbacker Causeway (Credit: Daniel Christensen)

Once one of the country’s worst regions for underwater homeownership, a new report shows South Florida’s housing market is headed to higher ground.

Listing website Zillow just released a fourth-quarter 2016 report detailing South Florida’s share of underwater homeowners who owe at least 20 percent more on their mortgages than the fair market value of their properties.

The report found South Florida’s percent of underwater mortgages, also called negative equity, fell to 10.1 percent by last year’s fourth quarter. That’s a 3.6 percentage point improvement compared to the 13.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2015, and a significant decrease from the more than 20 percent rate seen during the crash.

According to Zillow, the national trend of growing home prices has helped buoy many homeowners affected by the housing collapse out of negative equity.

South Florida, and especially Miami-Dade County, is no strange to swelling home values: property prices skyrocketed in 2014 and early 2015, though the rising tide of home prices has slowed over the past year.

But while the nationwide trend has leaned toward shrinking underwater homeownership, some major metros are still lagging behind others. The Zillow report states Las Vegas was the worst metropolitan area in the nation for underwater homes in the fourth quarter with a rate of 16.6 percent, following closely by Chicago, with 16.5 percent.

Rendering of North Shore Open Space Park

North Shore Open Space Park, the nearly 28-acre natural oasis that stretches from 78th Street to 87th Terrace in Miami Beach, is about to get a complete makeover.   

The park, known for its dense vegetation, is a popular destination for weekend visitors from the mainland who like the generally uncrowded beach area that runs along the park, and North Beach residents who enjoy running in the park and who make extensive use of its dog park.   

The Miami Beach Design Review Board on Tuesday reviewed plans that will transform the park, by adding paved walkways and more open vegetation that allow for greater visibility, as well as a paved beach walk that will make it possible to rollerblade or bike from 87th Terrace to South Pointe Park in South Beach.   

The plan was presented to the board by Calvin, Giordano & Associates and WEST 8 Urban Design & Landscaping Architecture, which also designed the Miami Beach Soundscape Park. West 8 is also working on the project design for Eighty Seven Park, a planned luxury condominium developed by Terra Group on the site of the old Howard Johnson Dezerland Hotel, just to the north of the park. Terra President David Martin bought the site for $65 million in 2013 and agreed to fund $10 million in improvements for North Beach, $6 million of which has been designated for the redesign of North Shore Open Space Park.   

New plans for the park call for adding two entranceways to the current four, and for enhancing the entranceways with sculptured metal gates. The plans also call for extensive buffering of vegetation, which now mostly grows wild. Gianno Feoli, project manager for North Shore Park at Calvin, Giordarno & Associates, told the board that while extensive trimming and pruning of vegetation will take place when the new park is finished, there will actually be 4,040 trees there, 217 more than what the park currently has.

Feoli told The Real Deal the “big idea” behind the park’s re-design “is to celebrate the spectacular botanic quality that the park has and that is something that has permeated every aspect of the design.”  

While most North Beach residents are supportive of the park’s re-design, Paula King, who spoke on behalf of several North Beach neighborhood associations, said many residents oppose current fencing around the park and don’t like the new fencing designs. She said many neighbors also want enhanced lighting for the park. Feoli said in his discussions with neighborhood residents many expressed concerns about the removal of shade trees and safety. He also said Miami Beach police have said they want a “physical boundary” around the park so they can enforce trespassing statutes. Several board members also said that changing the lighting would conflict with environmental regulations that facilitate the passage of sea turtles through the park. Board members approved the design submissions, but asked for a re-hearing on the fencing and lighting issues as well as on where the park’s playground should be placed.   

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