Motorola location at Plantation Pointe Office Park.

UPDATED August 9, 10:30 a.m.: Northbrook, Illinois-based Torburn Partners just sold a portion of an office park in Plantation for $56.6 million to Miami-based Midtown Capital Partners, led by Alejandro Velez, property records show.

The two buildings at 7600 and 7700 West Sunrise Boulevard span about 221,597 square feet. The trade breaks down to about $255 per square foot. An additional parking lot that spans 8 acres was also part of the trade.

Records show Midtown Capital Partners scored a $31.1 million loan from Hartford Fire Insurance Company. An entity of the company also scored a $12.5 million mortgage for adjacent buildings at 1740, 1760 and 1780 North University Drive and 7900 West Sunrise Boulevard, which it bought from Torburn in April. The total amount of financing amounts to $43.6 million.

Torburn paid $38.1 million in October 2013 for the 77-acre office park at 8000 West Sunrise Boulevard formerly known as the Motorola Solutions campus and now called Plantation Pointe Office Park. Torburn leased 850,000 square feet to entertainment technology developer Magic Leap and health care company Amsurg Corp.

In 2015 the developer obtained city approval for its plans to renovate the buildings at the property. It later obtained a $43 million loan.

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly identified the square footage as 215,744 square feet. It is actually 221,597 square feet. 

Hallandale Beach and Jay Cutler

Jay Cutler, who just signed a one-year, $10 million contract with the Miami Dolphins, wants a beachy vibe during his stay in South Florida, and will likely rent a condo on the beach in Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood or Hallandale Beach, according to a broker familiar with the quarterback’s search.

Cutler is looking for a three-bedroom, furnished unit with ample space for his wife, actress and designer Kristin Cavallari, and their three children to visit on the weekends, according to the source, who declined to be identified. The family recently moved from Lake Forest, Illinois to Nashville after Cutler was released from the Chicago Bears in March following eight seasons. He was hired by Fox to be a broadcast analyst before he signed with the Dolphins. The team announced his arrival in South Florida on Monday.

Cutler’s beachfront choice would be in contrast with that of many NFL players who often live in gated communities in suburbs like Davie or Weston. But if he wants the beach, Broward County is an easier commute to the Dolphins’ training facility at Nova Southeastern University than Miami Beach or other waterfront areas of Miami-Dade County, the source said.

Cutler could be looking at such properties as Hyde Resort & Residences Hollywood, a new, $360 million condo and hotel development; or Ocean Palms Hollywood, the Beach Club Hallandale, or Diplomat Residences, according to the broker. Rental rates generally range from $4,000 a month to $10,000 a month. The source said Cutler is becoming acquainted with the options online, and could sign a lease and move in as quickly as the end of this week.

Other brokers also envision Cutler heading for the beach.

“I think Jay will be a little more on the Miami Beach side, closer to the action, restaurants and prime shopping,” said Darin Tansey of Douglas Elliman’s sports & entertainment division.

“I could see him him looking at a house on North Bay Road that would give him expansive water views across Biscayne Bay, or in the South Pointe neighborhood if he is going to rent,” Tansey said, citing a condo tower like the Continuum.

He expects the goal after so many Chicago winters to be “an area that will provide incredible water views and where he and his wife might enjoy sunshine at the pool or even at the beach.”

Regardless, the brokers say privacy will be key: Cutler may not want everyone knowing just where to find him.

From TRD New York: There’s never a dull moment at WeWork. In 2014, the New York City real estate industry’s jaw dropped when the office-sharing start-up raised $150 million and hit a valuation of $1.5 billion, suddenly catapulting it into “unicorn status.” But less than a year later, it shocked the business world again with another monster fundraising round and new valuation — this one for $5 billion. And last month, it quadrupled that figure. Since launching with a single 3,000-square-foot Soho office seven years ago, the co-working company has racked up more than 155 locations in 49 cities around the world, from Boston to Buenos Aires to Berlin. Its global footprint now stands at more than 9 million square feet. WeWork’s meteoric rise has also spawned copycat companies in NYC and beyond. Even its largest NYC competitor, Regus, which debuted in 1989 and caters to a more corporate crowd, recently launched a hip new brand called Spaces to rival WeWork. Meanwhile, WeWork — which has expanded into co-living, fitness, construction and other areas — announced a leadership shake-up last month. While CEO Adam Neumann will remain at the helm, his co-founder Miguel McKelvey will take on a new role, and Jen Berrent, the company’s attorney, was named COO. Sources say the move was likely in preparation for the company’s anticipated IPO.

From TRD New York: As if getting construction loans isn’t hard enough, developers increasingly have to fight to find construction workers.

The number of construction job openings in the U.S. rose to a seasonally adjusted 225,000 in June, up from 163,000 in May, according to the federal labor department — the highest number since September 2016.

Meanwhile the number of construction job openings as a share of total employment rose to 3.2 percent in June, up from 2.3 percent in May, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Although the labor shortage partly reflects a rise in remodeling across the country, it also highlights that many of the former construction workers who left the workforce in the wake of the 2008 crisis have not (yet) returned.

As The Real Deal previously reported, the Trump administration’s efforts to curb immigration could also hurt the construction industry.  [WSJ] — Konrad Putzier 

3681 Flamingo Drive, Todd and Kim Glaser

Listing agent David Hunt Solomon

Spec home developer Todd Michael Glaser is ready to let go of his longtime Miami Beach home.

Glaser and his wife Kim just listed the seven-bedroom waterfront house at 3681 Flamingo Drive for $8.95 million as he wraps up construction of a new house he’s building for his family on Allison Island, he said. David Hunt Solomon of EWM Realty International is the listing agent.

Glaser paid about $1 million for the Flamingo Drive property in 2001 and added a four-bedroom, 4,200-square-foot wing to the now 7,360-square-foot home. It was built in 1936 and sits on a 32,000-square-foot lot with a three-car garage, a heated pool and a dock with a boatlift. It also has a one-bedroom guest comes. Glaser plans to add a three-car garage and gazebo if the property doesn’t sell the way it is.

The asking price breaks down to about $1,216 per square foot. Recent deals nearby include the $9.6 million sale of 5045 Lakeview Drive, which Coastal Construction co-president Tom Murphy sold for $9.6 million, or nearly $1,157 per square foot; and the $10.13 million sale last year of 3525 Flamingo Drive, a newly redeveloped waterfront mansion down the street.

“I could comp it out somewhere in the [$9 million range], but I told Todd let’s get tight … I guarantee you’ll get some action,” Solomon said.

Glaser, who is best known for developing modern spec homes as well as restoring older homes in Miami Beach, is expanding north to Palm Beach where he recently made his first purchase of a 1940 home that he plans to restore.

From TRD New York: Welcome to the brave new world of online borrowing. For the first time ever, a U.S. family closed a mortgage remotely using only electronic signatures.

The closing for a $290,000, 30-year mortgage on the Mueller family’s home in Illinois from Michigan lender United Wholesale Mortgage used technology from the online notary service Notarize. The borrowers talked to a notary via Skype and had to verify their identity by answering a set of questions and hold up their driver’s licenses, the Wall Street Journal reported.

In the past, so-called e-mortgages still required the physical presence of a notary at the closing or a pen-on-paper signature.

“We’ve purchased thousands of what we call electronic mortgages or e-notes where it is paperless, but this is the first transaction that we’re aware of where it was an entirely remote electronic online closing with all of the documents electronically signed,” Freddie Mac executive Samuel Oliver told the Wall Street Journal.

According to the Journal, the closing took half an hour. Notarize’s Adam Pase said five states currently allow remote notarization: Virginia, Texas, Nevada, Ohio and Montana. [WSJ] — Konrad Putzier

Ocean House

A condo unit at the seven-story luxury condo complex Ocean House in South Beach just sold for $10.7 million, property records show.

The unit at 125 Ocean Drive spans 4,365 square feet. The trade breaks down to about $2,451 per square foot, a relatively high price for a non-penthouse condo.

Unit U-0403 is a four-bedroom, four-bathroom residence, according to Redfin. The buyer is 125 Ocean Trust with Fred Fraenkel named as a trustee on the deed. Fraenkel, vice chair of the New York-based financial services firm Cowen Group, declined comment through his assistant.

Records show the condo in the South-of-Fifth neighborhood last sold for $6.7 million in 2012 by an entity linked to the Miami-based accounting and advisory firm MBAF.

The unit is one of 28 at Ocean House, 10 of which are loft-style units that face Ocean Drive, while the other 18 are beachfront. Amenities include private beach access, a beachfront pool, a fitness center and a private theater room.

Among its notable residents are vitamin mogul Andrew Lessman, founder of vitamin company ProCaps Laboratories, and Daniel Stephen Hafner, CEO of Kayak Software Corp., which operates the travel site Kayak.com.

Ocean House fell into foreclosure in 2009 and lender iStar Financial later seized it. The company invested in a series of capital improvements, including the common area’s total redesign by Antrobus + Ramirez, and relaunched sales in 2012.

Aerial view of Miami-Dade

UPDATED Aug. 9, 2:45 p.m.: Residential sales increased slightly in Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties and fell in Broward County during the second quarter of this year, as prices continued to rise, according to the Miami, Palm Beaches and Greater Fort Lauderdale associations of Realtors.

In Miami-Dade, overall sales inched up by 1.4 percent to 7,700 sales from 7,590 sales. Single-family homes fared better than condos, the report shows. There were 3,882 sales of single-family homes during the second quarter, up 5.8 percent from 3,669 sales during the same period last year. Condo sales declined 2.6 percent to 3,818 from 3,921.

Home prices are still on the rise. Median sale prices of single-family homes in Miami-Dade jumped 11.3 percent to $328,300 and condo prices rose 6.5 percent to $229,000.

In Broward, overall residential sales declined 4 percent to 9,410 from 9,806. Single-family home sales experienced a 6.7 percent slump in the second quarter, falling from 5,006 in 2016 to 4,672 this year. Condo sales declined by 1.3 percent to 4,738 from 4,800 – a difference of only 62 closings.

Median home prices rose in Broward as well. The median price of a single-family home was up 7.9 percent to $340,000 and the median price of condos increased 9.2 percent to $155,000, according to the Greater Fort Lauderdale Realtors.

Palm Beach County had a strong second quarter. Single-family home sales rose 2.3 percent to 5,221 sales in the second quarter, and condo sales were up 1 percent to 3,933 closings. The median price of a single-family home grew by 4.3 percent to $335,000, while the median condo price increased 5.3 percent to $170,000.

Total sales dollar volume increased in all three counties, up to $2.88 billion in Broward, $3.3 billion in Miami-Dade and $3.9 billion in Palm Beach.

Tickets are now on sale for The Real Deal’s first-ever California Real Estate Showcase and Forum on Thursday, Sept. 14!

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Our two panels, featuring some of the biggest names in L.A. real estate, will dive into into the city’s residential scene — from single-family pads to spec homes to the hottest DTLA condos — as well its commercial market.

Top industry pros will weigh in whether a residential peak is in sight, and what may come next for office and retail. The discussions will be accompanied by a networking lunch and post-panel coffee break.

Stay tuned for more information on the event. We hope to see you this fall at the Bank of America Plaza!

For sponsorship opportunities and more information, contact laadvertising@TheRealDeal.com or call 310-270-8124.

A flooded street in South Florida (Credit: Getty Images)

Researchers at the University of Florida have found that sea levels in the Southeast, including Miami Beach, rose six times faster than the rate of global increase between 2011 and 2015. Along the coast, below North Carolina’s Cape Hatteras, researchers have dubbed the area a “hot spot” of sea-level rise, according to the New York Times.

If you’ve felt that the ocean has been chewing away at the South Florida coastline, you’re not wrong. Researchers reported that residents of Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale observed unusual ‘sunny-day flooding’ in their communities, with salt water creeping onto streets during high tide.

“I said, ‘That’s crazy!’” researcher Andrea Dutton told the Times about the astonishing six-fold findings. “‘You must have done something wrong!’”

Southern Coastal sea levels rose about three-quarters of an inch, a tiny measurement of a coastline that equals billions of gallons of extra water on the coast.

UF researchers published their findings online Wednesday in an article titled “Spatial and temporal variability of sea-level rise hotspots over the eastern United States,” in the Geograhic Research Letter journal. The article reveals that the ‘hot spot’ rise was likely caused by two atmospheric patterns, the North Atlantic Oscillation and a cumulative El Niño. Ocean rise in the area was previously blamed on the Gulf Stream current carrying water north from the Gulf of Mexico.

Communities like Miami Beach that have already started to experience severe tidal flooding can expect continued rising seas over the long term, even if the rise occurs in steps, according to the New York Times.

Just last week, the tail end of Tropical Depression Emily inundated Miami businesses and homes with water, causing many to close their doors for the duration of the storm. Last year, The Real Deal published an article mapping the Miami condo towers that will be most affected by sea levels rise. [NYT] – Grace Guarnieri

Manny Chamizo and Daniel de la Vega

UPDATED, 5:50 p.m., Aug. 9: One Sotheby’s International Realty just hired a top commercial broker from Fortune International Realty.

Manny Chamizo III joined One Sotheby’s after 15 years with Fortune’s commercial division and the last five years as director, he said. Chamizo closed about $60 million in sales in 2016.

Chamizo grew Fortune’s commercial arm to nearly 170 agents, and he plans to grow One Sotheby’s 11-agent division the same way as its new global commercial director. While Fortune is “a strong player locally,” he said he was looking to work for a global company. Chamizo compared his 15-year tenure with Fortune to a marriage, adding that he was no longer “completely fulfilled.”

“Unfortunately we felt it was in the best interest of both Fortune and Manny to part ways, nonetheless we thank him for his time with our company and wish him the best in his future endeavors,” Walter Defortuna, chairman of Fortune International Realty, said in a statement.

He focuses on retail, office and land sales in Florida, and recently closed on the $3.3 million sale of the corner building at 2700 Ponce de Leon in Coral Gables, which the Mas family sold for a record $1,013 per square foot to a Peruvian restaurant developer. Chamizo also brokered the $12 million sale of the office building at 2300 West 84th Street in Hialeah.

One Sotheby’s International Realty spun its commercial division into a separate company in 2016 at the start of the slowdown in Miami’s luxury residential market and earlier this year hired former NAI Miami CEO Stephen Nostrand as its new chief operating officer and president.

On the residential side, longtime Fortune agents and top producers Allan Kleer and Fabian Garcia-Diaz left in June to join One Sotheby’s, also citing the firm’s global reach.

10391 Southwest 64th Avenue Inset: Hani El-Naffy

A former Fresh Del Monte Produce executive just paid $5 million for a mansion in Pinecrest, property records show.

Hani El-Naffy’s purchase comes a year after transitioning out of his position as president and COO of the Coral Gables-based company, where he’s currently a board member. Fresh Del Monte Produce is one of the world’s largest producers, distributors and marketers of fresh vegetables and fruits.

Records show El-Naffy and his wife Danielle bought the 9,452-square-foot, nine-bedroom mansion at 10391 Southwest 64th Avenue for about $529 per square foot. The seller is a New York-based entity managed by Kyle Tessiero. The company paid $5.1 million for the property in 2015, which means it just sold at a $100,000 loss.

The home, built in 2014, features floor-to-ceiling windows, wood floors, a walk-in wine cooler, guest home and pool. Records show the mansion sits on a 37,897-square-foot lot.

In recent years the village of Pinecrest has been home to a number of NBA players, including Dwyane Wade and Chris “Birdman” Anderson. Former Los Angeles Lakers player Lamar Odom sold his Pinecrest mansion after a number of price reductions for nearly $1.9 million in June.

Henry Flagler Statue. Meghan McCarthy/Palm Beach Daily News

Henry Flagler’s statue is set to get a new home in Palm Beach.

The Palm Beach Town Council approved funds up to $22,000 on Wednesday to relocate the statue to the town’s Main Street. Flagler’s descendant are also contributing up to $11,000 to cover project costs, according to the Palm Beach Daily News.

Flagler was the founder of Standard Oil and of what became the Florida East Coast Railway, and was a pioneer in the development of Florida. He is considered the father of Miami and Palm Beach. He died in Palm Beach in 1913.

The 11-foot bronze Flagler statue will be moved to the Royal Poinciana Way median east of the Flagler Memorial Bridge and Bradley Place intersection in Palm Beach.

During reconstruction of the new Flagler Memorial Bridge, the 11-foot Flagler was put in storage. Before that, it was east of the north bridge near the Golden Eagle and flagpole, according to the Palm Beach Daily News.

“I think it’s a much better location in the Royal Poinciana median,” Mayor Gail Coniglio told the Palm Beach Daily News. “It’s a better separation of the flag and the eagle as you cross the bridge.”  [Palm Beach Daily News]  — Grace Guarnieri

From left: Mauricio Umansky, James Harris, David Parnes and Christopher Dyson (The Agency)

From TRD Los Angeles: Quiet, off-market deals are the lifeblood of some of L.A.’s most high-end boutique brokerages, but one Beverly Hills agent wants to crank up the volume.

Christopher Dyson of the Agency has partnered with the the firm’s CEO Mauricio Umansky and “Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles” stars James Harris and David Parnes to launch a new online platform dubbed “The Pocket Listing Service,” or ThePLS.com, which will allow brokers to share and search nationally for off-market properties.

The site aims to cut down on the legwork required to market a whisper listing, which is typically shared between agents by word-of-mouth or through email blasts to a handful of brokers.

Dyson said more than 400 agents have registered for the service, which launched on Monday. Properties listed on the site so far range in price from $600,000 to $12.5 million. The site is not open to the public.

“[ThePLS.com] is really taking the pocket listing landscape and making it more efficient,” Dyson told The Real Deal. “I would receive 10 or 15 emails a day of pocket listings. If I didn’t have a client for it right then, it’d get lost in a wave of emails.”

Whisper listings play a big role in L.A.’s real estate market, as well as in other major cities. They’re particularly common when the client is a celebrity who wants to stay discrete or if a property is particularly expensive or in distress.

Companies such as Top Agent Network, offMLS and Zenlist have already tried to create similar marketplaces but so far, they’ve been unable to grow their businesses beyond a handful of markets.

“I don’t think anything has had a lot of traction,” said Judd Schoenholtz, co-founder and CEO of Open Listings. “There’s an oxymoron – a public platform for pocket listings.”

Dyson said the PLS has an edge over its competition because the site is only available to brokers. Agents must register with a valid license number. After creating a profile, the broker can upload details of their off-market listing and provide as much information as they like, from full listing details to simply an address.

A one-year membership is free for agents who join before September 30, though a membership charge will eventually be introduced.

Dyson said the site also offers an opportunity to test a property’s asking price without accruing “days on the market,” which he described as “every listing agent’s nightmare.”

“If we’re getting feedback from agents that think the price is too high, we can list it to the MLS as a conventional listing using that feedback,” he said.

Mike Shapiro, CEO of HÔM Sotheby’s International Realty, said he isn’t convinced that the listings will be easily vetted.

“There’s no way to know what is real or not,” Shapiro said. “Pockets are done in a close-knit kind of way that ensures others with absolute confidence that there’s someone legit on the other end. This is nothing but a shadow MLS.”

1200 Southwest 35th Avenue

Exeter Property Group just closed on a $108 million multi-state mortgage for properties, including two warehouses in Boynton Beach.

Property records show the Pennsylvania-based investment manager secured $14.7 million for the buildings at 1200 and 1220 Southwest 35th Avenue in Boynton Beach. The remaining financing is for properties in New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Utah and Virginia. Wells Fargo is the lender.

The Boynton Beach warehouses sit on an 8-acre site and were built in 2000. Exeter paid $7.1 million for the property in 2015, records show. The buildings total nearly 93,500 square feet and have 53,599 square feet of available space.

Exeter specializes in developing and managing industrial warehouses across the country and in Canada, according to its website. The firm could not immediately be reached for comment.

Last year, Exeter sold a Royal Palm Beach warehouse leased to American Tire Distributors to Cabot Properties for $15.7 million. The company also owns the neighboring 152,000-square-foot warehouse at 700 North 103rd Avenue.

Palm Beach, especially the northern part of the county, is a cheaper alternative for tenants to Miami-Dade and Broward. Warehouse and distribution rents in south Palm Beach County averaged about $10 per square foot, triple-net during the second quarter of this year, according to Colliers International South Florida.

Princeton Park rendering and Matt Rieger

Coconut Grove-based Housing Trust Group closed on construction financing for a $36 million affordable housing development in south Miami-Dade.

HTG plans to break ground on the 150-unit project at 13105 Southwest 248th Street in Princeton later this month, according to a press release. The developer will build Princeton Park using 9 percent low-income housing tax credits from Florida Housing Financing Corporation, $23.7 million from National Equity Fund and SunTrust, a $3.5 million loan from Column Financial and a permanent $7.3 million loan from Key Bank. That’s in addition to a $23.3 million construction loan.

Property records show HTG Princeton Park LLC paid $3.25 million for the 8.4-acre site earlier this month. The seller was Princeton Park Homes, led by Javier J. Cruz. It’s just west of a Florida Power & Light building and east of U.S. 1.

The development will be set aside for families earning 60 percent or less of the area median income, which is $45,300 for a family of four. Fifteen units will be for extremely low-income individuals earning 33 percent of the area median income, which is $24,915. Monthly rents will range from $384 for a one-bedroom to $984 for a three-bedroom apartment.

Princeton Park will be completed in a year and will remain affordable for 50 years.

Corwil Architects designed the garden-style apartment complex, which will feature a clubhouse with a fitness center, community room, work stations and swimming pool. Units will feature open floor plans with granite countertops and Energy-Star appliances.

In June, HTG and a Pennsylvania-based firm sold an affordable housing community in Dania Beach for $33 million. The Coconut Grove-based developer’s other projects include Arbor View in Margate and the Courtside Family Apartments in Overtown, the latter of which HTG developed with Alonzo Mourning’s AM Affordable Housing.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office has been looking into South Florida’s affordable housing industry. The expanding probe involves at least a dozen publicly subsidized developments by the Related Group and other developers, but has not involved HTG.

Jonathan Gray and Barry Sternlicht (Credit: Getty Images)

Blackstone Group and Starwood Capital group will merge their single-family rental businesses, creating a new landlord of 82,000 rental homes across 17 metro areas.

The deal is the largest for the single-family industry, the Wall Street Journal reported, since private equity investment in American homes shot up in the wake of the foreclosure crisis about a decade ago.

The new company will retain the name of Blackstone’s publicly-traded single family division, Invitation Homes, and will officially become the country’s largest single-family home owner, nearly two times larger than the closest competitor, Texas-based American Homes 4 Rent.

“This turned out to be a business,” Starwood chairman Barry Sternlicht told the Journal. “When we started out I think there were a lot of people who didn’t think it was a business. They thought it was a trade.”

Starwood previously merged its single-family business with Tom Barrack’s Colony Capital, creating Colony Starwood homes last year (the company changed the name to Starwood Waypoint after Barrack sold his stake).

The new Invitation Homes will be staffed with executives from both Blackstone and Starwood, and will include Sternlicht as well as Blackstone’e current head of real estate, Jonathan Gray. Holdings in the South Florida and Los Angeles areas account for a fair portion of Invitation Homes’ new portfolio, with more than 9,000 homes near Miami and 8,000 in the suburbs of Southern California.

Invitation Homes is at the vanguard of the single-family rental business’ rapid institutionalization. In January, Fannie Mae agreed to back $1 billion in Invitation Home’s single-family mortgage debt, an unprecedented transaction for the government-sponsored mortgage insurer. The move was criticized by the much of the home ownership lobby, particularly the National Association of Realtors, who saw the emerging industry as a threat to the market for home sales.

Invitation Homes held its initial public offering in January, raising more than $1.5 billion from investors.

President Trump recently appointed a veteran of the single-family rental business to be his top liaison to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. His choice for the senior post, Maren Kasper, was an executive at Roofstock, an online platform for single-family home investment. [WSJ] — Will Parker

Rendering of One Flagler and Jorge Perez

Related Urban Development, an arm of one of South Florida’s biggest developers, is a step closer to building a 25-story office tower in West Palm Beach.

The Downtown Action Committee on Wednesday approved upzoning the Okeechobee Business District, which is currently zoned for five-story buildings, according to the Palm Beach Post.

The zoning district would allow Related to build One Flagler, an office tower that would be built at South Flagler Drive and Lakeview Avenue, close to First Church of Christ, Scientist, and the Lake Worth Lagoon on Okeechobee Boulevard and Lakeview Avenue.

Commercial brokers spoke of the area’s dire need for Class A office space, the newspaper reported.

The Downtown Action Committee unanimously agreed to rezoning in part because it would allow for job creation in West Palm Beach. In July, the city’s planning board also unanimously approved the project. Related has also promised to preserve the 89-year-old church alongside the office tower. It was designed by African American architect Julian Abele.

In June, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced its investigation into Related Urban Development as a part of an expanding probe into the affordable housing industry in South Florida. Authorities looked into the publicly subsidized Related Urban project in Miami’s Shenandoah neighborhood. [Palm Beach Post] – Grace Guarnieri

1610 Collins Avenue

Blue Road, a Miami development company led by principals Jorge Savloff and Marcelo Tenenbaum, just announced the re-opening of the historic Berkeley Hotel in Miami Beach.

The Argentine investors spent a total of about $43 million on major renovations, construction and land purchases, according to a release. Blue Road has added 32 rooms to the pre-existing 64 units, as well as a rooftop garden and swimming pool deck that overlooks Collins Avenue.

The hotel at 1610 Collins Avenue, designed by Art Deco architect Albert Anis, will be managed by Palma, Majorca, Spain-based Iberostar Hotels & Resorts. It will have a BLT Steak restaurant in its hotel lobby, according to the release.

The Berkeley Hotel is the first hotel in the United States to be franchised by Iberostar, according to the release. Spanish billionaire Amancio Ortega owns Iberostar 70 Park Avenue in New York. The company has more than 100 hotels in Europe, Africa, the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, and the Americas.

The recent opening follows years of delays. The developers bought the site in 2013 for an undisclosed amount described as “very close” to the asking price of $13.78 million. Two years later they started on renovations after scoring a $18.4 million construction loan from lender Mercantil Bank.

The hotel, originally built in 1940, lies on the west side of Collins Avenue, across the street from the Loews Miami Beach and adjacent to the recently completed Hyatt Centric, which was developed by Robert Finvarb.

Blue Road’s Miami Beach portfolio includes the Redbury South Beach, The Crest Hotel and Hotel 18. Earlier this year Blue Road also re-opened its CASA Boutique Hotel in Miami Beach. – Amanda Rabines 

Click here to buy tickets

Mark your calendars, real estate pros — The Real Deal’s fourth annual South Florida Real Estate Showcase and Forum is going down Oct. 26 at Soho Studios in Wynwood!

Last fall we had a blockbuster showcase, with packed panels and more exhibitors than ever. This year we expect an equally full house and have included a limited number of VIP tickets that entitle you to a front-row seat at our panel discussions.

Attendees will be treated to a full day of programming (11 a.m. to 5 p.m.), with four panels exploring and analyzing every aspect of the real estate market, as well as a host of local merchants providing food and drinks. Confirmed panelists include Ron Shuffield (EWM Realty International), Alicia Cervera (Cervera Real Estate) Andres Asion (Miami Real Estate Group), Avra Jain (Vagabond Group), Art Falcone (Paramount Miami Worldcenter), David Martin (Terra Group) and Jay Parker.

Click here to buy tickets, and stay tuned for information on panel topics and panelists.

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

For sponsorship opportunities, email forum@TheRealDeal.com.