601 Harbor Drive in Key Biscayne

Today’s priciest new listing is a six-bedroom, six-bathroom single-family home asking $3.4 million. The 4,007-square-foot home is located at 601 Harbor Drive in Key Biscayne. It features a courtyard, two-car garage, carport and Italian kitchen. Haimar Hernaiz of Recall Property Group has the listing. (Condo Vultures data include condos and single-family listings in the main metropolitan areas of Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, as well as Monroe County that are newly listed. Listings are taken from the South Florida MLS.) –Mark Maurer

Two developer teams are facing off to win Miami Beach’s biggest public prize in a century, and one of the most buzzed-about urban renewal projects in the U.S. today – the redevelopment of the city’s convention center and a 52-acre parcel of city-owned land. Both projects envision condos, parks, cultural space, retail and a hotel, in addition to upgrading the convention center and adjacent ballroom. The lucky winner is expected to be announced July 17.

Portman-CMC is led by Atlanta developer Portman Holdings and CMC Group and Danish architect Bjarke Ingels. Behind South Beach ACE is New York developer Dan Tishman’s Tishman Hotel and Realty and UIA Management with Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. The revamp costs will be roughly split between the city, through a new penny tax on hotel beds, and the developer, who will pay rent to lease the land.

From the New York site: Applications to build single-family homes reached a five-year high nationally last month, according to Department of Commerce data cited by Bloomberg News.

The number of applications to build single-family homes rose 1.3 percent to a 622,000 per month annualized rate, the most dramatic month-over-month rise since May 2008. Construction starts on U.S. homes also saw an increase of 6.8 percent to an annual rate of 914,000, the Commerce Department announced.

Economists’ estimates for starts for the year were not far off. In a Bloomberg survey, projections ranged from an 875,000 annual pace to a 1.02 million rate. Work on multifamily projects such as apartment buildings increased 21.6 percent to an annualized rate of 315,000, the report said.

The average rate on a 30-year fixed loan jumped to a 14-month high of almost 4 percent last week, from a four-month low of 3.35 percent in early May. Neil Dutta of New York-based Renaissance Macro Research attributed rising mortgage rates to heightened consumer demand for loans, the publication said. [Bloomberg News] – Mark Maurer

West Palm Beach

Citibank is lending $11.8 million for the construction of a seven-story West Palm Beach residential building, the South Florida Business Journal reported.

The mortgage from the bank allowed Evernia Place Partners to start building 85 units at 627 Evernia Street. The John F. Weir-led developer paid a total of $1.7 million for the property over two transactions in April and May.

Kaufman Lynn Construction, based in Boca Raton, is serving as the general contractor. Citibank’s loan matures in two years, the Business Journal said.

Citibank has an office at 396 Alhambra Circle in Coral Gables. [South Florida Business Journal] –Mark Maurer

From left: Oceana Key Biscayne renderings and Eduardo Costantini

UPDATED, 5:30 p.m., June 18: Oceana Key Biscayne, the first U.S. development of Argentine real estate mogul and art collector Eduardo Costantini, is more than 90-percent sold-out pre-construction, leaving only 1 penthouse and 6 villas on the market 10 months after sales opened, The Real Deal has learned.

Oceana, the first new development in Key Biscyane in nearly 13 years, is scheduled to receive its final touches in July.

When completed in 2014, the Bernardo Fort-Brescia of Arquitectonica-designed all-glass, 14-story double tower on a 10.3-acre site will constitute a gated community with 142 units and 500 feet of private beach.

Costantini, chairman of the Nordelta gated community outside Buenos Aires and the founder of the Argentine capital’s Malba art museum, may exhibit works from his private collection in the Yabu-Pusehlberg-designed lobby. The community will also feature a social lounge, restaurant, pools, cabanas, a tennis court and a putting green.

The 5,187-square-foot, two-story villas with private pools on expansive private lots will be open for viewings starting August 15. Work is underway at Oceana Bal Harbour, Costantini’s development company, Consultatio, confirmed. –Emily Schmall

Caracas, Venezuela

South Florida is benefiting from a rise in violent crime in Latin America, WLRN reported.

While the region enjoys one of the world’s fastest rates of economic growth, it is simultaneously burdened with one of the worst waves of violent crime in its history, the public radio station reported.

Enter Miami.

The city and surrounding area’s shopping centers, casinos, hospitality sector and condo developers have benefited not only from Latin America’s burgeoning wealth but also from its runaway murder rates. Fleeing the deadly dispute among drug traffickers over terrain from Mexico to Colombia, more wealthy Latin Americans are landing on Miami’s shores.

“Condos in Miami are being snapped up by people from Venezuela, where Caracas is really one of the most violent cities in the hemisphere now, and people from Brazil, Mexico,” NPR reporter Lourdes Garcia-Navarro told WLRN. “They’re able to buy them because the economies in those places are doing so well, but they’re leaving to Miami because the criminality [back home] is simply so bad.” [WLRN] –Emily Schmall

Lincoln Road

Terranova Corp. and Acadia Realty Trust obtained a $84 million loan from Bank of America for a trio of retail buildings on Lincoln Road in Miami Beach, Daily Business Review reported.

Terranova and Acadia purchased the buildings at 719, 801 and 826 Lincoln Road for $139 million last year.

The buildings are fully leased, according to Terranova. Tenants include Aldo, Fossil, Kiehls, Steve Madden and Solstice.

The loan represents the “perfect intersection of great real estate, committed sponsorship and a great lender,” Terranova chairman Stephen Bittel said. [Daily Business Review] –Emily Schmall

From left: the La Gorce Island home that Goldstein was looking to seize and rapper Lil Wayne

Rapper Lil Wayne paid off a $3.4 million judgment against him, saving his Miami Beach mansion from seizure, GossipExtra reported, citing paperwork filed to Miami-Dade County.

Lil Wayne (Dwayne Michael Carter) can keep his $11.6 million mansion on La Gorce Island, one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Miami Beach, by responding to the judgment.

Back in November, a Los Angeles jury found that Lil Wayne had deprived producer Quincy Jones III of potential profits by blocking the release of a documentary about him.

By April, Lil Wayne still hadn’t paid up and Jones’ Miami lawyer David Goldstein indicated he would go after assets, including the La Gorce manse and several luxury cars.

The singer of “Lollipop” called the whole thing off by writing a check, the website reported. [Gossip Extra] –Emily Schmall

10315 Sabal Palm Avenue in Coral Gables

Today’s priciest new listing is a four-bedroom, four-bathroom single-family home asking $4.9 million. The 7,129-square-foot home is located at 10315 Sabal Palm Avenue in Coral Gables. It features a Spanish-aged barrel tile roof, high ceilings, a marble fireplace, a wet bar, pool, rose garden and a split bedroom plan with room to expand. Christine Stiphany of Esslinger Wooten Maxwell has the listing. (Condo Vultures data include condos and single-family listings in the main metropolitan areas of Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, as well as Monroe County that are newly listed. Listings are taken from the South Florida MLS.) –Mark Maurer

Flagler Village rendering

Palm Beach County appears to have it easy when it comes to raw, available land at affordable prices.

Elsewhere in South Florida however – in Broward for example – developers have to put extra effort into landing multi-acre projects, the Sun Sentinel reported.

It helps focus the Alliance’s economic development efforts that prioritize high-tech, high-wage jobs, Bob Swindell of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance told the Sun Sentinel.

The Alliance is in talks with an existing business about converting nearby industrial space to what they need for additional employees. Smaller parcels also can be assembled into a larger piece of land, the newspaper said. At the same time, construction is under way on the Related Group’s multi-use project on Flagler Village, near downtown Fort Lauderdale, slated to include office space, residential units and a parking garage. Related bought the land for $13 million in 2011, as The Real Deal reported at the time.

Coconut Creek-based Butter Construction specializes in transforming “problematic” properties, such as land with contamination issues or in need of reinforcement, into viable land. [Sun Sentinel] – Mark Maurer

Bank of America in Tallahassee (Credit: Tallahassee Leon FL)

A Boynton Beach resident is among the plaintiffs in a multi-district lawsuit alleging that Bank of America willingly hindered modifications requested by borrowers through the federal Home Affordable Modification Program, the Palm Beach Post reported.

In her lawsuit, Shari Goldman said she completed a trial loan modification that reduced her monthly payment by $390. She continued to pay the same amount, but six months later, was denied a permanent modification and was told she owed $3,158 in back payments.

She threatened with foreclosure and paid the $3,158. Despite appealing it, she was denied again, the newspaper said.

Palm Beach County court and property records show no foreclosure was filed against Goldman and that she is still the owner of the home.

The suit filed last week in federal court is seeking class-action status. The statements from former Bank of America employees accused the lender of intentionally denying thousands of loan modifications by lying to homeowners and repeatedly requesting documents employees knew were already in the system. Employees who placed 10 or more accounts into foreclosure in a month could get $500 bonuses or gift cards to Target and Bed, Bath and Beyond, a former employee said in a statement.

Bank of America responded, saying the statements are “rife with factual inaccuracies” that will be addressed in opposition documents filed next month.

Earlier this month, Florida’s attorney general Pam Bondi wrote in a five-page letter to Bank of America claiming it may not be fully complying with the terms of last year’s nationwide, five-bank mortgage settlement, as previously reported. [Palm Beach Post] –Mark Maurer

Arno de Vos

The sales prices of single-family homes and condominium units in Miami Beach’s luxury real estate market rose at a steady clip from a year ago, according to a report by Miami-based Douglas Elliman broker Arno de Vos.

From June 1, 2012 to May 31, 2013, 803 condos and 291 single-family homes sold in Miami Beach’s luxury residential market, which de Vos defines as homes valued at $500,000 and higher.

The average sales price of a single-family home in this category rose 5.2 percent, from $2.186 to $2.3 million, while the sales price per square foot rose 11 percent, from $468 to $521.

During the same period, the averages sales price of a luxury Miami Beach condo rose to $1.474 million from $1.408 million, a 4.7 percent increase, while sales per square foot rose 7.4 percent, from $755 to $812.

The priciest listings in Miami Beach as of the year ending May 31 have been a $30 million single-family home, compared to a $19.8 million single-family home in 2012, and a $27 million condo, a 25.5 percent gain over the highest sale a year ago of $21.5 million. –Emily Schmall

From TRD’s Spring panel in Aventura sprung a lively conversation among South Florida’s top developers about the humming state of the market and lingering concerns from the last bust. We were lucky enough to bring onstage Carlos Rosso of The Related Group; developer Avra Jain; Gil Dezer of Dezer Development; Kevin Maloney of New York-based Property Markets Group and Eric Trump of Trump Development.

“I think that the world has changed,” said Rosso during the panel, which was held along with a reception at the site of the future Echo Aventura condominium, a PMG development. “I think that the best that can happen for all of us is that the world stays a little bit longer like this. We are calling this the Viagra cycle – you know, we want it to last a little bit longer,” he said.

Eric Trump condemned the sloppy etiquette of the previous real estate boom in South Florida, which began to erupt in 2008.

“We came from a false market, a market where people could write their FICO score on a cocktail napkin and get millions and millions of dollars in financing, pre-approved, ahead of time, even though they couldn’t afford it. People were buying beyond their means, and they couldn’t finance it, and that ultimately caused the crash,” Trump said.

Dezer was optimistic for prospects as one of a few landholders in Sunny Isles Beach, including as developer of the Porsche Design tower, but expressed a wariness over the all-cash deals fueled construction. “I’m worried about where the money’s coming from,” he said.

We asked them and now we want to ask you: Give us your take on the market and its future by posting your comments. How on target are these developers?

A screenshot of the panel

Archived image of Al Capone’s former estate at 93 Palm Ave. on Palm Island, Miami Beach

Al Capone’s former Palm Island mansion sold for $7.43 million, according to the sale’s Miami-based broker team, The Jills.

The house, at 93 Palm Island, is said to be where Capone allegedly planned the St. Valentine’s Day massacre and died of syphilis years later.

The estate, which the gangster reportedly purchased for $40,000 in 1928, boasts a private beach area on 100 feet of Biscayne Bay frontage, a spacious swimming pool and cabana area and multiple balconies, according to Jill Hertzberg, a top-selling Coldwell Banker agent.

“The owner of this property did a magnificent job renovating it, and it is reminiscent of a fabulous boutique hotel on the water,” Hertzberg said.

The two-story seven-bedroom mansion is 6,077 square feet and dates to 1922, according to Miami-Dade County property records, where the owner is listed as the Peter L. Casell trust.

The home was last assessed this year at $4.5 million, records show. The white-awning estate sits on a 6.9-acre lot on Biscyane Bay, a short jaunt from the Atlantic Ocean, between Hibiscus Island and downtown Miami. –Emily Schmall

Haider Zafar

Federal investigators allege a Pakistani native from Ohio living large in Miami Beach bilked a Washington, D.C.-area businessman of about $10 million over the course of two years, the Miami Herald reported.

Haider Zafar, a legal U.S. resident, spent the money on luxury cars, diamond jewelry and clubbing in South Beach, the Herald reported, citing a criminal complaint filed in late May.

Zafar, 35, is locked up in Ohio as a federal grand jury awaits to hear charges against him, including wire fraud, money laundering and tax evasion. The alleged victim, Patwinder Sidhu, 47, who made his fortune by founding and selling an IT consulting firm, contacted Zafar through an investment banker.

Zafar convinced Sidhu that his uncle was Pakistan’s defense minister, responding for buying land for the government. Zafar would receive tips on what to purchase and then sell the land to the Pakistan government for a profit, according to the complaint. [Miami Herald] –Emily Schmall

Jorge Pérez

Housing shortages are pushing Miami-based developer Related Group deeper into Section 8 and affordable housing, principal and co-founder Jorge Pérez told The Real Deal at the sandy, future site of IconBay in Miami’s Edgewater.

“It’s partly diversification – we’re looking to not put all our eggs in one basket into condominiums which happened the last boom,” he said. “It’s partly demand.”

Five years after South Florida’s housing market dropped out, crippling Related and other Miami-based developers with debt, homeownership has declined significantly, with many residents moving into rentals.

Even so, Miami has an acute shortage of affordable housing, according to local advocates, developers and the non-profit National Housing Conference.

Rent or mortgage payments and transportation consumes 72 percent of moderate-income households, defined as those taking home $25,444 to $50,888 in the Miami metropolitan area, according to the NHC’s most recent report.

In spite of Miami’s glitz, three out of four households have an income of $75,000 or less, with housing and transportation disproportionately high.

Stephanie Berman, chief executive of Carrfour Supportive Housing, Florida’s largest non-profit affordable housing developer, told TRD there is huge demand whenever units go on the market.

“I have people lined up around a city block,” she said.

A handful of for-profit players, sometimes partnering with local NGOs, build for and house Miami’s large median-income population, who take home about $32,000 a year.

And the pool of developers has at least temporarily shrunk with the chilling effect of the federal grand jury investigation of Miami-based Carlisle Development Group, the third largest affordable housing developer in the U.S. with a slate of $1 billion in completed projects.

Related is happy to pick up some of the slack, Pérez said.

The company has branched off into four business areas: new condo construction, market-rate rentals, acquisitions and government housing, including The Loft towers in downtown Miami.

“We’re doing a Section 8; we’re doing some for sale-affordable, we’re doing some redoing of public housing affordable, construction, rehabilitation, so we’re very busy,” he said. “We’re doing very, very well.”

The company is returning to “its roots,” said Pérez, 64, a native of Argentina and naturalized U.S. citizen whom Forbes estimates has a net worth of $1.2 billion.

Pérez is simultaneously overseeing construction of an eponymous art museum in downtown Miami by the Swiss architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron.

The former city planner started in low-income housing before going into luxury development with Related Companies’ Stephen Ross, the present-day owner of the Miami Dolphins.

More than one in three of Related’s 41 projects are in the affordable housing sector, in cities and towns from Miami-Dade County to Orlando in Central Florida.

“It’s how to make the numbers work and how to get selected, right? It’s very competitive,” Pérez said.

“The higher priced the job, the greater the profits, but it’s much less risky than the condominium so it’s a good way of diversifying oneself and reaching all the segments of income,” he said.

The Ritz-Carlton in Fort Lauderdale

Today’s priciest new listing is a two-bedroom, two-bathroom condominium asking $14.5 million. The 3,833-square-foot ocean-facing apartment is located atop the Ritz-Carlton at 1 North Fort Lauderdale Beach Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale

The apartment boasts a 4,000-square-foot balcony overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, a putting green and a theater room. Dan Teixeira of Realty Marketing International has the listing. (Condo Vultures data include condos and single-family listings in the main metropolitan areas of Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, as well as Monroe County that are newly listed. Listings are taken from the South Florida MLS.) –Hiten Samtani

600 Brickell Ave.

International investment firm Change Capital Inc. has leased 14,172 square feet at Miami’s newest office tower, Brickell World Plaza at 600 Brickell Ave., for its new corporate headquarters, The Real Deal has learned.

Other tenants include banking giant Northern Trust, law firm Hogan Lovells, Crédit Agricole Private Banking Miami, Boston Consulting Group, New York-based commercial and construction mortgage lender Doral Money Inc., and global mediation and arbitration service provider JAMS.

Jones Lang LaSalle’s Glenn H. Gregory and Noel Steinfeld represented the developer, the Miami-based Foram Group, and JLL’s Scott Sheron represented Change Capital.

The new lease helps to cement the renown of Brickell, Miami’s financial district, as the “Wall Street of the Americas,” Steinfield said.

The office building won LEED’s highest certification, platinum, and is ISO 27001-certified, an international benchmark for information security. Average leases rent for $44 to $48 per square foot, according to JLL. –Emily Schmall

Charlotte Durante

A Palm Beach County judge sentenced former Delray Beach City Commissioner Charlotte Durante to seven years in prison for first-degree felony charges of fraud and money laundering, the Sun Sentinel reported.

The sentence was significantly softer than the 20-year minimum state guidelines for such charges, but Circuit Judge Charles Burton said he couldn’t bring himself to impose such a stiff sentence on Durante after hearing of her brain tumor.

“I’m not prepared to sentence Charlotte Durante to death in this case,” Burton said.

Assistant State Attorney Ryan Kelley said that between between 2006 and 2008, Durante used her credibility to convince 83 investors to give money for what she falsely described as bridge loans to be used by her real estate clients looking to purchase homes.

Durante’s $1.8 million scheme got mostly Haitian immigrant investors to shell out cash for a planned expansion of Durante’s daughter’s museum, Kelley said.

“That’s not just stealing,” Kelley told the court. “That’s betrayal.” [Sun Sentinel]  – Hiten Samtani

Future retail at 825 Collins Ave.

Aria Development Group has acquired a 7,310-square-foot, two-story residential apartment building for $5 million at 825 Collins Avenue in Miami Beach that it plans to convert into a flagship store, The Real Deal has learned.

Aria principals Joshua Benaim, Tim Gordon and David Arditi, in partnership with Wexford Capital and 13th Floor Investments, plan to raze the building and replace it with a Class-A, 10,000-square-foot-plus retail for a high-fashion tenant.

Aria, which Arditi told TRD is heavily vested in Miami Beach, is also developing the boutique 321 Ocean, a 21-unit condo in the South of Fifth neighborhood.

The developers recently obtained approval from Miami Beach’s Historic Preservation Board to tear down the 1966 structure on a site already zoned for multi-use. Neighbors include A/X Armani Exchange, Barneys New York, Nicole Miller and Kenneth Cole.

“Aria Development Group recognized the property’s potential for a ‘higher and better use’ in the shopping district,” said Miguel Alcivar, an associate with CBRE’s Private Capital Group who represented the property’s seller, FCI Miami Beach One, a Federated Companies affiliate.

“A lot of other properties on Collins Avenue are historic, so tenants have to restrict themselves to tight space with low ceilings, which isn’t optimal for retail. This was an opportunity to build something new,” Arditi said. –Emily Schmall

Chris and Adrienne Bosh

Miami Heat center Chris Bosh’s wife has firmly put an end to speculation that the couple would move out of their North Bay Road home, the Sun Sentinel reported. Adrienne Bosh’s remarks follow the basketball star’s announcement that he would look to put the 12,368-square-foot home on the market.

Before facing the San Antonio Spurs in game four of the NBA Finals, Bosh told the Sun Sentinel the decision was due to his wife expecting the couple’s second child, and had nothing to do with his playing career.

But hours later, Adrienne took to Twitter to say: “Our house is def not listed. We are in the middle of building a new nursery.”

Bosh, who was previously at the Toronto Raptors, is neighbors with Heat guard Dwyane Wade, and Wade often spends evenings at Bosh’s home before games, according to the Sun Sentinel. [Sun Sentinel] – Hiten Samtani

From left, Matthew Whitman Lazenby, Stanley Whitman and Randy Whitman

At the age of 94, Stanley Whitman could reinvent luxury retail – again.

Growing up during the Depression, Whitman, the owner and founder of Bal Harbour Shops, learned a precept he continues to live by: luxury is an inelastic good.

The shopping center north of Miami Beach, which opened in 1965, was named last year the world’s most productive shopping center, measured by sales per square foot, on the planet.

“I brought the Fifth Avenue merchandise back to Miami,” Whitman told The Real Deal. The shopping center, the site of the first Gucci and Prada retail outlets in the U.S., drew wealthy Northeasterners to South Florida. “If I’d leased the stores to type of clothing my wife dressed in, I’d be broke,” he said.

“With Miami rated as the third poorest large city in the U.S., what we have here could not exist in 1965 nor today,” he said.

For consumers of luxury from cities like Buenos Aires and Moscow, Bal Harbour Shops, which Whitman opened as a retired U.S. Navy officer in 1965, is synonymous with Miami – a mecca for high-end shopping.

Now the Whitmans are branching out in a joint venture with Hong Kong-based Swire Properties to develop the retail portion of the future Brickell CityCentre, a $1.05 billion mixed-use complex.

Stanley Whitman says wealthy out-of-towners have been Bal Harbour Shops’ lifeblood, and that a new influx of foreign tourists from Latin America, Russia, the E.U. and China is the impetus for CityCentre.

“Our interest in the Brickell CityCentre is very simple: Bal Harbour was the only location available to get this huge tourist business, but now we have tourists coming from the Mandarin Oriental and Four Seasons in Brickell. There’s no change to the concept, it’s just a bigger market, and Latin America and other parts of the world have gotten very wealthy,” Whitman said.

In transient South Florida, Whitman, 94, and his family, including executives Randy, Whitman’s son, and Matthew Whitman Lazenby, Whitman’s grandson, will receive an award from Urban Land Institute for “sustainable retail.”

“Florida is seeing so many projects start and fail. It’s all about the initial returns in the first few years and then sell it off! The Whitmans have been there for so long, it’s more than just the typical retail story,” said Julie Medley, director of ULI’s Southeast Florida and Caribbean district office.

The award is an acknowledgement of what the Whitmans have achieved with Bal Harbour, and what observers and residents hope will achieve with CityCentre – nothing less than a lasting impact.

“I saw the opportunity in the market place in Brickell as extremely compelling — the CityCentre capitalizes on the notion of urban reinvestment that’s sweeping the nation,” Matthew Whitman Lazenby, who joined the company in 2003, said.

Bal Harbour and CityCentre differ on one huge point: parking. Stanley Whitman innovated at Bal Harbour, enraging some by charging for validated parking, to discourage beachgoers from filling up the lot. By contrast, at CityCentre, the MetroMover will stop at a station inside the facility and all parking will be underground, driving construction costs through the roof to provide pedestrians with street-level storefronts.

“My grandfather told me it is the primary responsibility of the leasing or operating agent to give the market what it wants, not what it ought to want,” Whitman Lazenby added.

43 Star Island Dr.

Rosie O’Donnell has sold her Star Island mansion for $16.5 million, $3 million below the original asking price, the New York Post reported.

“Rosie sold the Star Island home because she was hardly getting down there with her kids’ busy schedules,” an unnamed source reportedly told the Post.

O’Donnell, who has five children including a five-month-old baby, bought the property at 43 Star Island Drive in 1999 for $6.75 million from the Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church, the Post said.

She listed the 12-bedroom mansion in one of Miami Beach’s most exclusive enclaves in April, just days after “The Rosie Show” on Oprah’s TV network was canceled.

The 1923 Spanish-style hacienda boasts 11,104 square feet on more than an acre of land, two separate guesthouses, a pool and 203 feet of Biscayne Bay frontage with a large dock. [New York Post] –Emily Schmall

A storm over Miami

South Floridians and New Yorkers refuse to stop building beachfront homes even though the ocean is rising rises, the Economist reported.

Fort Lauderdale is still recovering from Hurricane Sandy, which swept through South Florida before heading north, the magazine said. The city is building a new sea wall, mending the highway and bolstering its eroded beaches with sand from an inland mine in central Florida, the magazine said.

But South Florida’s fast-growing population coupled with an influx of cash buyers, spending millions on oceanfront properties, makes deterrence impractical.

The same is true in the Northeast U.S., despite rising sea levels and ever-more devastating storms.

New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg released an ambition plan June 11, calling for floodwalls and levees, storm-surge barriers, the construction of a new lower Manhattan district modeled off Battery City and protected by multi-level levees and the enhancement of natural barriers such as sand dunes and wetlands around the outer boroughs.

Seth Pinsky, in charge of New York City’s post-Sandy plan, told the Economist the city has 400,000 people, 270,000 jobs and 68,000 buildings inside the 100-year flood plain. [Economist] –Emily Schmall

3100 North Flagler Drive

Today’s priciest new listing is a five-bedroom, six-bathroom single-family home asking $3.695 million. The 5,700-square-foot gated home is located at 3100 North Flagler Drive in West Palm Beach. It features a new roof, new flooring, separate guest house, pool, spa and a dock. James McCann of the Corcoran Group Palm Beach has the listing. (Condo Vultures data include condos and single-family listings in the main metropolitan areas of Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, as well as Monroe County that are newly listed. Listings are taken from the South Florida MLS.) –Mark Maurer

Quantum Village shopping center in Boynton Beach

The Quantum Village shopping center in Boynton Beach has been sold to an Illinois-based rental management company RMS Properties, according to a release from Stiles Realty, which represented the owner BBX Capital Corporation.

Stiles Realty represented BBX Capital in the deal for the 93,144-square foot Publix-anchored property located at 1005 West Gateway Boulevard. The buyer acquired a leasehold interest only, with a 33-year term, Stiles said. The sales amount was not released.

The shopping center, developed in 2007, is 71 percent leased to tenants such as CrossFit, the UPS Store, Allstate and Supercuts. It was the defendant in a foreclosure action by Secured Holdings of Newport Beach, Calif. in 2010, as previously reported.

Stiles Realty broker associate Kimberly Barbar and Vice President of Retail Leasing Ryan Karlin were involved in the sale, the release said. –Mark Maurer

Miller Machinery & Supply Co. in Wynwood

Commercial property owners in Miami’s emerging Wynwood neighborhood have formed a fundraising initiative to keep the streets clean and safe, the Miami Herald reported.

Business and parcel owners voted by a 65-percent margin last week to form the Wynwood Business Improvement District, allowing for the levy and collection of a special assessment for the next decade within the arts community. It is expected to generate about $700,000 in the first year, the Herald said.

The Miami City Commission is scheduled to accept the election results at a meeting tonight, the newspaper said.

The Wynwood BID covers a 47-block stretch from 20th to 29th Streets and from the railroad tracks near North Miami Avenue to Northwest Fifth Avenue.

Last June, the Wynwood area received a $140,000 ArtPlace grant to go toward creating a Business Improvement District, as previously reported. [Miami Herald] –Mark Maurer

From left, Brickell Bay Dr. site and Miami developer Tibor Hollo

Miami mega-developer Tibor Hollo is thinking big for his 2.5 acre bay front site at 1201 Brickell Bay Drive, exMiami reported.

Hollo recently submitted plans to build 1,208 residential units on the site, along with 20,050 square feet of retail space and a 14,450-square-foot restaurant, according to exMiami.

The Villa Magna site, half owned by Hollo’s Florida East Coast Realty and New York-based Corigin, was put on the market in October 2012 but taken off two months later after Hollo decided to develop, according to the Miami projects blog. Recently paved over, it sticks out amid nearly construction.

Hollo previously stated that the project would include 800 residential units, a “high-class” hotel, retails shops and restaurants. [exMiami] –Emily Schmall

Priciest publicly-listed Palm Beach property

The $42 million sale of a mansion on “Billionaires Row” in Palm Beach resolves a bankruptcy case tied to luxury home developer Dan Swanson, the Daily Business Review reported.

A bankruptcy judge closed the case of 1220 South Ocean Boulevard LLC. The company, managed by Swanson, filed a voluntary petition for bankruptcy last September, citing $41.5 million in debt, the Review said.

Swanson, of Addison Development, originally put the home on the market in September of 2011. The buyers are a “very nice couple” that liked the size of the property, buyer’s agent Stephen Ploof of Linda A. Gary Real Estate in Palm Beach told the Wall Street Journal.

The home was listed at $74 million, catapulting it to the top of Palm Beach’s priciest publicly listed properties.

“The reality is we had to live through the whole financial crisis,” Swanson told the Review. The company bought the site in 2007 and started building in 2008.

Completed in 2011, the property has 20,000 square feet of living space, including nine bedrooms, boasts 7,000 square feet of loggias, garages and a guest house, and a 12,000-square-foot motor court, a dock and a pool with fountains.

Swanson’s Addision Construction Corp. has three current residential development projects underway, according to the newspaper.

Towers of Coral Springs

In six months Beacon Investment Properties has spent half a billion dollars acquiring class A office space in U.S. “pockets of opportunity,” the Hallandale, Fla.-based company told The Real Deal.

For now, these “pockets” may be tapped out in South Florida. Beacon’s latest acquisition streak netted it 3.1 million square feet in Houston, Dallas, Atlanta and Minneapolis. Beacon last acquired Florida property in 2010. Its active portfolio includes Golden Glades Office Park in Miami Gardens, The Towers of Coral Springs and Villaggio Plaza in Orlando.

“In Miami you are seeing a lot of activity, even Fort Lauderdale is starting to show some positive growth now, but the Miami properties, typically the returns are lower,” Terry Kennon, Beacon’s Dallas-based director of asset management, told TRD.

Beacon, managed by three co-founders and an attorney, all of whom are based in South Florida, uses private equity to purchase undervalued and distressed properties.

Founded in 2003, Beacon has five million square feet under management with goals to increase holdings by 60 percent over the next two years.

Beacon is continuing a strategy around the U.S. it first employed in Florida: buy low.

“We only buy properties at below market value and well below replacement costs,” Ariel Benata, Beacon’s co-founder and chief investment officer, said in a company release.

Benata, a native of Venezuela and New York University business school grad, said Beacon has the good fortune of institutional-investor partners and lenders to help “close quickly on opportunities where the seller wants a timely execution.”

Daren Blomquist

Florida resumed its reign at the top of the nation’s foreclosure rankings in May, according to Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac.

In the Sunshine State, one in every 302 homes was in some stage of repossession last month, according to RealtyTrac. That’s about three times the national average.

South Florida, which includes Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, had the highest foreclosure rate among metropolitan areas at one in 209 homes.

Florida led the nation for six consecutive months until being surpassed by Nevada in April.

Many of the cases working their way through the court system now are delinquent mortgages from the housing bust that lenders finally are addressing, RealtyTrac spokesman Daren Blomquist said. The numbers are well below the 2009 peak.

“These are inevitable foreclosures that need to happen for the market to be completely healthy,” he said. –Emily Schmall

Peter Zalewski

Peter Zalewski is one of those rare skeptics about South Florida’s booming real estate market, especially all the condominium projects. And the consultant has listeners, even a developer who has hired him to be that nagging voice of dissent.

Aventura’s Marketing Council crowded a dining room at the Gulfstream racetrack to hear Zalewski, a Chicago native raised in a family who acquired properties around the city to rent, and among the industry’s few internal critics, poke holes in South Florida’s enlarging canvas of proposed condominiums.

Instead, Zalewski began a talk Wednesday, co-sponsored by the mckafka developer group, describing himself as a reformed “vulture.”

“Buyers today are buying out of fear and prosperity,” Zalewski said, adding that demand has sent prices per square foot up, making the rental market a healthy-margin business for investors.

In downtown Miami, only about 600 units remain dormant of the tens of thousands of condo units that went up during the last boom, Zalewski calculates.

Twenty-two towers across South Florida are currently under construction that collectively add 3,400 condo units to the market.

With land costs rising, Zalewski said the condo-development game in South Florida boils down to the cost of maintenance.

Asked to identify winners and losers of the current real estate cycle, the Porsche Tower in Sunny Isles Beach “could be a winner” because of its “ummatched” offerings, Zalewski said, while a condo planned for Palm Beach’s Transit Village may rely too much on the success of the proposed All Florida railway project. It’s not clear to Zalewski how the developers in Miami’s “condo corridor,” his term for a grouping of high-rise condos proposed around the Brickell CityCentre at Coral Way and S. Miami Ave., will inhabit the thousands of units set to go on the market roughly at the same time.

“The beauty of pre-construction is it’s all smoke and mirrors,” Zalewski quipped, adding that the fall-out rate from a market bolstered by 50-percent and higher deposits could be dramatic.

Other projects, like the Crimson, the first effort by a pair of Harvard Business School alums, Stephan Gietl and Fernando Levy Hara, strike the balance for Zalewski between a competitive rental and investment-property market.

Zalewksi’s skepticism garnered him business as an advsier for The Crimson, the 90-unit condominium tower mckafka plan for Miami’s Edgewater neighborhood, which has become a magnet for developers.

“We went through every option, every detail, and Peter would tell us how that didn’t work at so-and-so building, and that’s literally how we designed the Crimson,” Levy Hara, a principal at mckafka, told The Real Deal.

Agents from Condo Vultures Realty, owned by Zalewski’s wife, broker Jenny Huertas, are jointly showing the Crimson’s one- to three-bedroom building with 90 units that features an 8th floor “C Club” with sundeck, swimming pool, hot tub and outdoor-indoor mini-theater.

“The Crimson…is designed with efficient floor plans – limited wasted space – with limited hallways, below average maintenance fees and liberal condo docs that permit rentals three times annually,” Zalewski said.

In addition to paid advice, Zalewski’s company, Condo Vultures, produces free reports, markets and brokers properties and tracks development through sites such as cranespotters.com.

Zalewski – a licensed, non-practicing broker and former journalist – said market conditions are improving as inventory from the previous boom shrinks.

However, he acknowledged that banks and other owners could be holding onto as much as 55 percent of the more than 200,000 units that were foreclosed or repossessed after the 2008 bust, shadow or “warehoused” inventory, with owners said to be controlling the supply to bolster pricing.

Inside Continuum South Beach, Unit 3202

Barclays corporate banking chief John Winter sold a five-bedroom apartment in South Beach for $8.6 million to Juan Carlos Correa, the top executive of a Coca-Cola bottling company in Ecuador, the seller’s broker, Mark Zilbert, told The Real Deal.

The 5,329-square-foot oceanfront unit sprawls across half of the 32nd floor of the South Beach Continuum complex’s north tower. The unit went on the market in September, listing at $9.995 million. Zilbert, the principal of Zilbert International Realty, described it as “a basic build-out” and said that in order to command South Florida’s princeliest sums, a unit “needs extra gloss.”

“We kind of used the market to figure out the price, and because a five-bedroom apartment on South Beach is such a scarcity, we thought we could attach a premium, but at the end of the day, the price is really good,” Zilbert told TRD.

Winter and his wife, Amelia, purchased the apartment in March 2008 for $6.75 million over two separate deeds, according to Miami-Dade County property records. The two units were merged during the building’s construction, Zilbert said.

Correction: This article has been updated to correct the purchase price, which was $6.75 million and not $13.5 million as previously reported.

3140 North Bay Road in Miami Beach

Today’s priciest listing is a six-bedroom, eight-and-a-half bathroom single-family home asking $14.95 million. The 8,355-square-foot home is located at 3140 North Bay Road in Miami Beach. It features a hardwood pool desk, gym, direct access to the bay and dock, split-plan guest quarters and space for a nursery or office. Benjamin S. Moss of Campins Company has the listing. (Condo Vultures data include condos and single-family listings in the main metropolitan areas of Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, as well as Monroe County that are newly listed. Listings are taken from the South Florida MLS.) –Mark Maurer

Anand Nallathambi, president and chief executive of CoreLogic

Four out of 10 Miami-area homeowners remain underwater, but the number is shrinking nationwide, according to a new analysis by Irvine, Calif.-based CoreLogic.

“The negative equity burden continues to recede across the country thanks largely to rising home prices,” Anand Nallathambi, president and chief executive of CoreLogic, said in a release. “We are still far below peak home price levels, but tight supplies in many areas coupled with continued demand for single family homes should help us close the gap.”

Nationally, underwater mortgages declined to 9.7 million, or 19.9 percent of mortgaged residential properties, from 10.5 million, or 21.7 percent, from the fourth quarter of 2012 to the first quarter of this year.

The national aggregate value of underwater mortgages decreased in the first quarter by more than $50 billion to $580 billion from $631 billion at the end of the fourth quarter of 2012.

Most home equity is concentrated at the high-end of the housing market, according to Corelogic. About three out of four homes valued at less than $200,000 have positive equity, compared to 88 percent of homes greater than $200,000. –Emily Schmall

IFB Center in Miami

Real estate brokerage Blanca Commercial Real Estate has been tapped as the exclusive leasing agent for the 51,600-square-foot office building that houses International Finance Bank headquarters in Miami, it said in a release.

Andres del Corral and Danet Linares of Blanca Commercial Real Estate will lead the marketing and leasing. Architecture firm Nichols Brosch Wurst and Associates designed it before opening in 2011, the release said.

About 25,500 square feet of space is available for lease, including 11,500 square feet of adjoining space on the sixth floor, as well as 14,000 square feet on the fifth floor. The latter includes the exclusive use of a large landscaped terrace. A 2,628 square foot retail space fronting Douglas Road is located on the ground floor.

In January, the Miami-based firm was named the exclusive leasing agent for Downtown Miami’s 101,144-square-foot Courthouse Tower and Doral’s 8200 Doral office building, as previously reported. – Mark Maurer

Jeff Greene and 100 Vandam Street in Manhattan

From the New York site: Billionaire real estate entrepreneur and former Florida Senate candidate Jeff Greene has set his sights on New York City, with plans to bring two Manhattan condominium projects to market in the next few years.

Palm Beach, Fla.-based Greene, famous for predicting the housing crash and thereby making a fortune betting against subprime mortgages, is planning a 140,000-square-foot condo project at 100 Vandam Street in the Hudson Square area of Manhattan, he told The Real Deal yesterday. Nearby, in Soho, he is also heading up the condo conversion of a six-story building at 576 Broome Street, as previously reported.

Greene, who ran for the Senate seat in 2010, acquired two buildings on Vandam Street last year – a 14,700-square-foot commercial building at 92 Vandam for $21.3 million and a 40,000-square-foot office building at 100 Vandam for $27.5 million.

The smaller building has 42,496 square feet in unused air rights, while the latter has 23,550 square feet. The investment mogul will clear the site to make way for a roughly 75-unit building later this year, he said, once several leases at 100 Vandam expire.

Massey Knakal Realty Services represented the seller of 92 Vandam, Sandro La Ferla, in the first transaction, which closed in December. The second building, controlled by a different owner, was sold in a direct deal.

The upper floors of the project will likely have one unit per floor, while the lower floors could have up to four units each, Greene speculated. The developer is currently in the process of selecting an architect for the building. The units will likely ask somewhere between $2,000 and $3,000 a square foot, he said.

Greene, who has never developed a property in New York City and is mainly focused on South Florida, said entering the market had not been a premeditated decision; the right opportunities just came along, he said.

In Soho, Greene bought the defaulted note on the Broome Street property after the previous sponsor, a group led by Trinity Development Group, fell into financial difficulties and faced foreclosure. He later took control of the property for $26.27 million in 2011.

Ritz-Carlton Palm Beach

The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company is parting ways with its Palm Beach hotel by July 1, the national chain said in a release.

The company is alleging a breach of contract in a multimillion-dollar counterclaim against RC/PB, the owner of the building at 100 South Ocean Boulevard in Manalapan.

The hotel was projected to rake in millions of dollars in net profit this year under Ritz-Carlton’s management. But soon RC/PB will manage the hotel, under a different name, the release said.

Ritz-Carlton argued that, despite RC/PB’s claims regarding unsatisfactory management of the hotel, it always passed the contractual performance test, the release said.

The hotel chain has nine locations in Florida, including Fort Lauderdale and South Beach. Donald Trump became an owner of the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club & Spa in Jupiter in Palm Beach County after signing a contract in November, as previously reported.

Priciest publicly-listed Palm Beach property

A 20,000-square-foot home that was on the market for $74 million, making it the most expensive public listing in Palm Beach, Fla., has sold for $42 million, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The sale, which closed June 7, is one of the largest in Palm Beach in recent years. Donald Trump sold his mansion to Russian fertilizer tycoon Dmitry Rybolovlev in July 2008 for $95 million; Howard Stern reportedly bought a Palm Beach mansion last month for $52 million.

Located in an area referred to as Raider’s or Billionaire’s Row, the French-chateau-style estate has nine bedrooms, 17 bathrooms and a five-car garage.

Built in 2011, it also has 7,000 square feet of loggias, garages and a guest house, a 12,000-square-foot motor court, a dock and a pool with fountains.

Seller Dan Swanson, of Addison Development, originally put his home on the market in September of 2011. The buyers are a “very nice couple” that liked the size of the property, buyer’s agent Stephen Ploof of Linda A. Gary Real Estate in Palm Beach told the Journal. [WSJ] –Emily Schmall

Elliman Chairman Howard Lorber, CEO Dottie Herman and Dolly Lenz

From the New York site: Dolly Lenz, Douglas Elliman’s perpetually top-ranked luxury sales broker, is leaving the firm after a 14-year tenure, The Real Deal has learned.

Lenz was not immediately available for comment on the reason for her departure. Elliman declined to comment.

For years, Lenz and fellow power broker Carrie Chiang battled for the top spot at the city’s largest residential firm. Lenz eventually withdrew from the competition in 2011 in order to allow other brokers a chance to contend. Instead, she received a newly created Stratosphere award.

Lenz has sold to celebrities like acting duo Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith as well as rocker Billy Joel and designer Karl Lagerfeld.

From left, Le Parc at Brickell and Henry Pino, Raimundo Onetto and Patricio Ureta

The Magic City’s fame as an international business and hospitality center continues drawing foreign cash buyers to Miami-Dade County rather than to cheaper Broward and Palm Beach counties, South Florida-based developer Henry Pino told the South Florida Business Journal.

Pino’s firm, Strategic Properties, has several condo projects underway conceived of with these buyers in mind.

“We are targeting international cash buyers who continue to look at Miami as an attractive city for luxury real estate,” he told the Journal.

Strategic Properties has partnered with AXA Developers, a collaboration between Chile’s largest publicly-traded residential developer, Aconcagua, and Miami-based Archiplan USA to construct the 12-story Le Parc, a 12-story “boutique” condo tower in Brickell.

The companies, which teamed up along with Raimundo Onetto and Patricio Ureta to purchase a property in Edgewater, are marketing these projects to foreign investors with cash, able to put down half the ticket price as a deposit, which helps finance construction. [South Florida Business Journal] –Emily Schmall

444 Arvida Parkway in Coral Gables

Today’s priciest new listing is a five-bedroom, six-bathroom single-family home asking $10.5 million. The 8,613-square-foot home is located at 444 Arvida Parkway in Coral Gables. It was designed by Chris Fergis and features marble floors, a Poggenpohl kitchen, wood-burning fireplace, detached gym, sauna and a three-car garage. Audrey H. Ross of Esslinger-Wooten-Maxwell has the listing. (Condo Vultures data include condos and single-family listings in the main metropolitan areas of Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, as well as Monroe County that are newly listed. Listings are taken from the South Florida MLS.) –Mark Maurer

The Real Deal is already the go-to source for South Florida real estate news. But what about when you’re on the go? Download TRD‘s free mobile app, available now in the Apple iTunes store.

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Bank of America

Despite criticism from Florida’s attorney general over mortgage settlement practices, Bank of America is strengthening its foothold on the market, Bloomberg reported.

The lender boosted home-loan volume 57 percent in the year through March by selling more products to existing customers, chief financial officer Bruce Thompson said today. Its cut of the U.S. mortgage market fell below 4 percent after it shut a business that bought loans marketed by third-party firms, he said.

“We’ve been building that back up and expect to be in the 5 percent area as we exit the second quarter and look to continue to grow from that,” Thompson said in the report. “That share gain is coming on getting what we believe is our fair share back.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote in a five-page letter last week to the bank claiming it may not be fully complying with the terms of last year’s nationwide, five-bank mortgage settlement, as previously reported. She accused it of failing to do the following: maintain a single point of contact, comply with the settlement’s dual tracking restrictions, comply with certain timing requirements and oversee foreclosure counsel, the publication said. [Bloomberg] – Mark Maurer

Previous St. John CDC rehabiliation

Two apartment buildings fully rehabilitated with federal government dollars have opened in Miami’s Overtown, adding to the architectural heritage of the historically black neighborhood as well as to Miami-Dade County’s much sought-after affordable housing inventory, the Miami Herald reported.

Built in the 1950s style of Masonry Vernacular, St. John Village, 1410 NW First Place and 1731-41 NW First Court,  two-story structures with jointly 34 one- and two-bedroom apartments, was developed by St. John Community Development Corp., the developer arm of a Baptist congregation with more than a century’s roots in Overtown.

Many of the apartment buildings in Overtown, built by black pioneers who labored on Miami’s ill-fated railway, followed a similar building style.

St. John CDC gave the previously foreclosed properties a new coat of pastel paint, new landscaping and a fence, the Herald said.

The units are intended for renters earning less then half the local median income, or about $32,700 for a family of four, according to the newspaper.

The two buildings are part of a group of foreclosed properties to receive some of the $89 million in funding awarded from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in the second phase of the Neighborhood Stabilization Program. [Miami Herald] –Emily Schmall

From left, Serena Williams and her recently sold Palm Beach house

Tennis champ Serena Williams sold a Palm Beach five-bedroom house for $595,000, taking a $105,000 hit, Gossip Extra reported.

Williams, 31, quietly sold the investment property in February, the Miami blog said, citing public records.

Williams bought the house at 122 Tranquilla Drive in the neighborhood of Mirasol for $700,496 in 2005. Jameka LLC., William’s company, sold the 4,000-square-foot house in February for $595,000, according to public records.

The new owner is Tracy Muser, according to property records. [Gossip Extra] –Emily Schmall

CityPlace, across from vacant 2.4-acre site

Longtime South Florida rivals Related Cos. of New York and Michael McCloskey of West Palm Beach are in a horse race for a 2.4-acre site in downtown West Palm Beach, the Palm Beach Post reported.

Related recently triumphed over McCloskey in a decade-long battle to redesign the city’s convention center with a new hotel, a bid city project muddied by a commissioner’s being sent to prison on federal fraud charges.

The parcel, at the corner of Okeechobee Boulevard and South Dixie Highway, is known as the tent site because of the large tents that were pitched there in the early 2000s, the Post said. HUB Holdings of Abu Dhabi is the third contender for the West Palm Beach site.

Related wants to pre-lease its future 12-story Gateway Tower office building, which will be built on a triangle patch of land on Okeechobee Boulevard across from Related’s CityPlace Tower building, which the company developed and sold.

“Between Gateway and the tent site, that’s 600,000 square feet of space, or twice the size of CityPlace Tower,” Niel Marin, chairman of NAI/Merin Junter Codman in West Palm Beach, told the Post, questioning how quickly the area could be occupied.

Related could bank the tent site and wait for opportunities, a broker suggested to the Post.

“In the game of Monopoly, it’s as close as you can get to Park Place,” Peter Reed, a principal at Commercial Florida Realty Services in Boca Raton, told the paper. [Palm Beach Post] –Emily Schmall

From left: 82 La Gorce Circle, Billy Joel

UPDATED, 2:16 p.m., June 10: Singer Billy Joel has sold his Miami Beach Mediterranean-style mansion for $13.75 million in an all-cash deal, $1 million off its listed price, according to One Sotheby’s International Realty, whose agents brokered the deal.

The property at 82 La Gorce Circle was built in 2004 and boasts 8,881 square feet of living space, including seven bedrooms and eight and a half bathrooms, a wine cellar and expansive outdoor kitchen, according to the MLS listing.

TMZ reported the buyer as Diego Della Valle, owner of Tod’s and a majority shareholder in Saks Fifth Avenue worth a reported $1.55 billion. A spokesperson for One Sotheby’s was unable to confirm.

After six years in the house, Joel put it on the market in May 2012 for $14.75 million, nearly $1 million more than what he paid for it in 2006. An infinity pool runs parallel to the property’s 165 feet of water frontage on Biscayne Bay. Inside the house, second-floor balconies open up to a natural stone and marble, tiled courtyard adorned with arches, fountains, columns and forged iron light fixtures.–Emily Schmall

From left: the Hochsteins and 42 Star Island

Preservationists hoping to save the home of a “Real Housewives of Miami” star from demolition lost an appeal, the Miami Herald reported.

“Real Housewives of Miami” cast member Lisa Hochstein and her plastic surgeon husband Leonard, also known as “The Boob God,” won approval to tear down the house from the Miami Beach Design Review Board in March, as The Real Deal reported.

The Miami Design Preservation league appealed and filed to have the home designated historic, the Herald said.

A special master on Tuesday released a decision that denies MDPL’s appeal of the demolition. The league can appeal the master’s decision in court.

Leonard Hochstein told the newspaper he expects the matter to go to court.

“And they’ll lose. They’ll delay us and they’ll cost us more money, but that’s what these people do,” he said.

The prominent white house was built in 1925 and sits on a corner of Star Island visible from the Macarthur Causeway. The couple recently made local news for throwing a “Scarface”-themed party at the 42 Star Island property, dousing it in fake blood. [Miami Herald] –Emily Schmall

110 Arvida Parkway in Coral Gables

Today’s priciest listing is a six-bedroom, nine-and-a-half-bathroom single-family home asking $35 million. The 12,756-square-foot home is located at 110 Arvida Parkway in Coral Gables. All rooms have bay views, 12 foot ceilings, wood and marble floors. It features over 200 feet of dockage, attached in-law quarters with an elevator and a third-story observatory. The property also has a billiard room, library, exercise room, laundry room, air-conditioned four-car garage. Todd L. Siegel of Florida Connect Realty has the listing. He did not immediately return calls for comment. (Condo Vultures data include condos and single-family listings in the main metropolitan areas of Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, as well as Monroe County that are newly listed. Listings are taken from the South Florida MLS.) –Mark Maurer

Publix Super Markets (Credit: Publix)

Fort Lauderdale-based commercial real estate firm Stiles has begun construction on a new $35 million shopping center called West Lake Commons at the corner of Sheridan Street and South Federal Highway, the Sun Sentinel reported.

Publix Super Markets, Pollo Tropical and Starbucks are expected to take up space there when it opens in the second quarter of 2014. Stiles bought the 14-acre, ex-Hollywood Lincoln Mercury dealership site for $13 million in March.

Stiles also announced it has recently leased 15,315 square feet of office space on Las Olas Boulevard to two companies. Collectibles retailer Fanatics Mounted Memories will move its headquarters to the 105,000-square-foot Plaza at Las Olas, and One Sotheby’s International Realty is opening a new location at the 23-story 365,439-square-foot Las Olas City Centre.

Last month, Stiles sold the Sawgrass Technology Park at 1601 Northwest 136th Avenue for $52 million, one-third less than the $79 million it paid for the complex in 2005, as previously reported. [Sun Sentinel] –Mark Maurer

1601 Belvedere Road in West Palm Beach

A West Palm Beach office building is at the center of nearly $10 million foreclosure lawsuit filed by Wells Fargo Bank, the South Florida Business Journal reported.

The bank sued Belvedere Investment Associates because the 110,795-square-foot office building at 1601 Belvedere Road has an outstanding mortgage debt of $9.9 million.

The loan matured in December and the mortgage has been delinquent since March, the publication said. William A. Meyer manages the borrower, but was not named in the suit. The bank represents a commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) trust.

The building was bought in 2003, the same year it was renovated. Since 2005 – when the loan originated – the property’s appraisal dropped from $15.5 million to $6.8 million. It earned $1.37 million in revenue over the first nine months of 2012 and its operating expenses were $716,408, according to Trepp LLC data seen by the Journal.

Space is available for lease online at $13 to $15 per square foot. The property consists of 102,769 square feet in two office buildings, both of which are five stories. [South Florida Business Journal] –Mark Maurer

Flash sales define housing market

Frenzied homebuyers are making offers on the spot before someone else has the chance, leading to what observers call a “flash sale,” Sun Sentinel reported.

A resident of Pembroke Pines in South Florida’s Broward County, Angela Medina and her husband were driving north to view two homes in Palm Beach County when she received a text alerting her to a three-bedroom home that had just gone on the market in Palm Beach Gardens.

The couple drove there, made an offer and signed the contract, in less than 24 hours, Medina told the Sentinel.

“From the time it hit my phone to the time we saw it, maybe an hour passed,” Medina, 36, told the newspaper. “You’ve got to be proactive.”

Stiff competition from bulk buyers and all-cash investors is aggravating a housing shortage in South Florida. Flash sales are reducing the average time a house goes from listed to contracted for sale.

During two weeks in April, 1,503 homes went under contract in South Florida’s tri-county region, a 149 percent increase over the same period a year ago, the Sentinel reported, citing the Redfin real estate brokerage. –Emily Schmall

From left: Icon Brickell and Jill Hertzberg and Jill Eber

A penthouse at Icon South Beach in Miami Beach sold for $15 million to an overseas buyer, according to the sale’s broker, Jill Eber, one half of the Coldwell Banker power-agent pair, The Jills.

“It’s absolutely stunning and completely raw – no bathrooms, nothing,” Eber told The Real Deal. “It’s all glass with 360-degree views,” she said, along with another peculiar feature – a nine-car garage.

The triplex boasts more than 8,000 square feet, including a private pool and elevator, roof-top terraces, huge skylights and floor-to-ceiling windows on each floor, the brokers said.

Icon South Beach was among a trio of Icon towers designed by Phillipe Starck and developed by the Related Group. A 35-story tower is linked to a 40-story tower in an S shape.

Three-bedroom units at the complex list starting at $1.2 million, according to the building’s website. –Emily Schmall

Correction: This article has been revised to correct the name of the building where the penthouse was sold. It was the Icon South Beach, not the Icon Brickell, as was previously stated. The name was misprinted in publicity materials announcing the sale.

Emily Schmall

A new luxury condo tower, a big retail lease. Trends and hot deals pop up all the time in South Florida’s real estate market. What are you hearing? What projects are on the drawing boards? What’s the next big thing in housing or retail space? Who are the new hires or start-up companies? Let us know. Send your tip along with your contact information to The Real Deal‘s South Florida bureau chief, Emily Schmall, at southfloridanews@therealdeal.com.

Pérez Art Museum Miami under construction

In South Florida, behind every star architect is a star builder.

John Leete, the head of Florida operations for John Moriarty & Associates, a Winchester, Mass.-general contracting and construction company, has garnered billions from Miami’s current condo boom, according to an interview with the Miami Herald.

Leete’s company is responsible for the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the $220 million project whose construction is underway at Museum Park designed by Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron, and, in a joint venture with Americaribe, Swire Properties’ $500 million BrickellCityCentre. Leete has worked on $2 billion in projects developed by Related Group, co-founded by the museum’s namesake, Jorge Pérez.

Asked whether South Florida is gaining momentum in construction, Leete said “it has been for the last 18 months and is continuing to pick up steam.”

“The number of new projects this year alone is staggering. The big question is if and when they all break ground. It will be like turning back the clock to 2006,” he said, adding that labor shortages and the cost of materials continue to be industry challenges.

PAMM, a LEED-certified building that incorporates South Florida’s natural landscape, posed particular construction challenges, Leete said.

“The [museum] has some key features such as the largest hurricane-rated glazing panels that also incorporate museum requirements for tinting and color rendering for the artwork. [There are] hanging-garden elements that mimic a Banyan tree; and also large column-free art galleries utilizing cutting-edge concrete-slab systems from Europe,” he said.

Leete predicted BrickellCityCentre will be “the catalyst” to Miami’s economic recovery from the recession. [Miami Herald] –Emily Schmall

Condo Vultures’ Peter Zalewski

Miami-based consultancy Condo Vultures founder Peter Zalewski is preparing to name the winners and the losers of the current condo boom.

Zalewski will give a speech June 12 before the Aventura Marking Council and separately during a roundtable event hosted by mckafka Development, the Harvard alumni planning to build the Crimson tower in Miami’s Edgewater neighborhood.

At least 138 condo towers containing more than 18,500 units have been proposed for South Florida as of the end of May, according to Condo Vultures’ licensed brokerage, CVR Realty, and its “cranespotters” database.

“Fueled by investors primarily from overseas,” a release announcing Zalewski’s planned talk June 12 for the Aventura Marketing Council said, nearly 49,000 condo units have come online in South Florida’s largest coastal markets since 2003, with approximately 2,450 of them still unsold, not counting the more than 8,000 units investors bought in bulk with intentions to resell at a premium.

Six years after South Florida real estate began to crash, one new condo tower has been completed in the tricounty region, Condo Vultures said in the release. Twenty-two other high-rises are under construction as a new development cycle gains momentum. [condovultures.com] –Emily Schmall

Office at condo at Murano at Portofino in Miami Beach

Today’s priciest new listing is a three-bedroom, three-bathroom condominium at Murano at Portofino asking $3.195 million. The 2,190-square-foot home is located at 1000 South Pointe Drive, unit 2704, in Miami Beach. The property has two tennis courts, bayfront pool, gym and health spa. A private two-floor elevator foyer greets the unit. Jose Luis Pere of One Sotheby’s International Realty has the listing. (Condo Vultures data include condos and single-family listings in the main metropolitan areas of Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, as well as Monroe County that are newly listed. Listings are taken from the South Florida MLS.) –Mark Maurer

Pam Bondi and Bank of America

Florida’s attorney general Pam Bondi wrote in a five-page letter to Bank of America claiming it may not be fully complying with the terms of last year’s nationwide, five-bank mortgage settlement, the South Florida Business Journal reported.

Bondi accused the multinational corporation of failing to do the following: maintain a single point of contact, comply with the settlement’s dual tracking restrictions, comply with certain timing requirements and oversee foreclosure counsel, the publication said.

Last month, she said her office was considering claims that Wells Fargo and Bank of America were violating those terms, as previously reported.

The $25 billion settlement between the government and the nation’s five largest mortgage lenders has gone to some 102,000 distressed Florida homeowners with an average of $75,949 in relief, according to a February report of the Office of Mortgage Settlement Oversight. Bond reviewed the Florida portion of the settlement over alleged violations of law in mortgage servicing and handling foreclosure cases.

According to the attorney general, nearly 40 percent of the 293 complaints that her office received from consumers over this matter were about Bank of America. [South Florida Business Journal] –Mark Maurer

From left: interior at One Thousand Ocean in Boca Raton, Fla., and Luxury Resorts’ Jamie Telchin

In a regular feature, The Real Deal will take a look inside South Florida’s priciest, biggest and most interesting real estate deals.

The fifth and final penthouse at One Thousand Ocean, a luxury condominium in Boca Raton that dates back seven years, closed June 4, capping off a whirlwind sales streak at the building and a substantial marketing campaign to save a project from the previous boom from going belly-up.

Known as “The Shore,” the unit sold to an undisclosed buyer for $11.7 million, or $1,547 per square foot, the developer, LXR Luxury Resorts & Hotels, whose New York-based parent company is an affiliate of Blackstone Group, said. It is the third largest condo sale in Palm Beach County history and an important milestone for One Thousand Ocean, a project that was nearly killed by the real estate crash and had only closed on one unit by February 2010.

Starting March 4, four of project’s penthouses and a two-story “beach villa” townhouse, sold in 90 days. The Shore sale alone represented nearly a third of the three-month period’s $38 million in sales.

The 7,550-square-foot condo with 4,591 square feet of wraparound terrace space features a private elevator lobby, glass walls, an outdoor kitchen, a private cabana and three-car garage, according to LXR.

The sale of One Thousand Ocean’s final penthouse was the pinnacle of an elaborate marketing campaign launched by Jamie Telchin, a longtime Boca Raton resident and the luxury properties developer for New York-based Luxury Resort, who took control of marketing the building in January 2009 after a promotion.

The building was featured twice on HGTV’s hit reality series “Selling New York,” and was the backdrop of several scenes from the Hollywood action thriller “Parker” starring Jennifer Lopez and Jason Statham.

Telchin and his team also paired up with other luxury retailers to showcase high-priced jewelry, furniture and automobiles in model units designed by the likes of Venus Williams’ V*Starr Interiors, events that drew several hundred people, all of whom were targeted later in e-mail blasts, Telchin told The Real Deal.

“I had to manage for years expectations from our investors, from our other residents, in terms of where we were going to be price-wise, and ultimately be in a position to weather the storm of the market, and not drop prices or have fire sales,” Telchin said.

Telchin’s team also took out ads with Google’s international version of AdSense and in international magazines, he said. The buyer mix has included people from the Northeast and South Florida, Peru, Brazil, London, Canada, the Ukraine and Russia, Telchin said.

“To make those decisions and to see those decisions pan out with an overwhelming amount of sales activity on penthouses that, quite frankly, we couldn’t sell for the last couple of years, and to only be left with two units going into the summer is really beyond my expectations,” he said.

The penthouse sales streak at One Thousand Ocean began in March, when a penthouse sold for $5.8 million, or $1,415 per square foot.

Boca Raton attorney and real estate investor Richard A. Murdoch’s Sea Villa LLC next purchased the three-bedroom, three-and-a-half bathroom beach villa property for $5.2 million. A second penthouse, 5,652-square foot unit known as “The Beach,” sold for approximately $8.7 million.

At the end of May, a 4,628-square-foot penthouse at the oceanfront condominium known as “The Sky” sold to an undisclosed buyer for $7 million.

Palm Beach County’s latest record was set three weeks ago in a $17.45 million transaction for a 5,798-square-foot penthouse at Il Lugano Palm Beach, followed by $11.95 million for a condo and cabana at Two North Breakers Row in Palm Beach.

Rendering of hotel’s pool area

New details have emerged regarding the 800-unit hotel being designed by Pritzker Prize winner Rem Koolhaas as part of South Beach ACE’s proposal for the $1 billion, 52-acre redevelopment of Miami Beach’s convention center, the group said in a release.

Under his firm OMA’s plan, all of the rooms will have private balconies, with curved design that references the Art Deco style of Miami Beach. The pool deck is oriented toward the east, with views toward the ocean and room for outdoor events, the release said. The hotel will sit at the center of site.

A penthouse lounge will rise 194 feet high above ground. The hotel, convention center, ballrooms and meeting rooms will all be integrated within the same building, to make it more convenient for hotel guests.

The Dutch architect was behind the Faena renovation of Miami Beach’s Saxony Hotel. He faces architect Bjark Ingels on the competing team Portman CMC.

Convention Center Plaza rendering

South Beach ACE proposes developing 59,500 square feet of retail on the ground floor of a renovated 17th Street garage. There will also be 40,000 square feet of food and beverage space is planned in a standalone building as part of the team’s hotel program. It envisions a renovated convention center, an 800-room convention hotel and “a network of green spaces.”

Also leading the South Beach ACE team are New York-based development firm Tishman and Miami Beach developer UIA, the release said. –Mark Maurer

Gables-Ponce in Coral Gables, Fla., a luxury all-rental residential and mixed-use development

Privately held national REIT Gables Residential has opened the 248-unit Gables-Ponce luxury rental community in Coral Gables as South Florida residential inventory disappears and the rental market strengthens, the company told The Real Deal.

The mixed-use development at LeJeune Rd. and Ponce de Leon Blvd. will be anchored by a 24,000-square-foot Epicure Market, scheduled to be completed in the fall. The development was first reported earlier this week in the South Florida Business Journal.

“It is almost a third leased on word of mouth alone,” Israel Kreps, a principal of the press relations agency Kreps DeMaria, told TRD.

One bedrooms at the all-rental development, which features “tropical” resort-style amenities including a cascading pool and cabanas and a 3,200-square-foot fitness center, start at $2,050 per month, with three-bedroom units up to $3,760 per month. The project neighbors the shopping area of the Village of Merrick Park.

The developer, Atlanta-based Gables Residential, manages approximately 38,000 apartments and 400,000 square feet of retail space across the country including Austin, Dallas, Houston, Southern California, Washington, D.C. and South Florida.

“Gables-Ponce uniquely captures the essence of this charmed city,” senior vice president Joe Wilber said in a company release. The development reflects a trend of more people returning to urban living, Wilber said.

The design gives a nod to the 1920s Mediterranean Revival style that characterizes much of Coral Gables, the company said. –Emily Schmall

Correction: The article has been updated to correct a publicist’s and a reporter’s errors. The project will offer 248 units, not 249 units, and two-bedroom units will start at $3,615 and go as high as $3,760, not the $4,760 previously reported.

From left, space in the Miami Innovation Center, a shared lab and Wexford’s Bill Hunter

In a commercial building in Miami’s historic Overtown neighborhood, one tenant harvests bone for dental implants, another tests a lab theory that Chinese moths can treat epilepsy while a third uses expensive bandwidth to link U.S. clinics around the world live with specialists at the hospitals and universities in Miami’s 153-acre medical district.

Although new Miami has come to be known for art hubs Wynwood and the Design District, Overtown, a historically black neighborhood off the interstate, has a blossoming biomedical industry.

The 250,000-square-foot — 68 acres — University of Miami Life Science Technology Park is nestled among six hospitals and over 3,500 beds, and contains the nation’s largest tissue bank.

In Miami, which has the second-largest medical district in the U.S. behind Houston, Tex., medicine has clearly become big business. The district employs as many as 100,000 people, though not all in high-paying jobs.

The park’s developer, Wexford Science and Technology, a biomedical realty company, has developed similar multi-use medical spaces around the U.S., including the University Technology Park at IIT, the Hershey Center for Applied Research and a 100,000-square-foot wet and dry lab at Norfolk, Va.’s Old Dominion University.

Miami’s Life Science Technology Park is 75 percent leased. Its tenants are a mix of university research facilities and medical companies at different stages, sharing labs and expensive glasswash equipment, and protected from natural disaster with hurricane-grade construction and a power generator. The space, anchored by the University of Miami’s 80,000-square-foot tissue bank, is becoming a center for commercial biomedicine, a growth area in Miami, according to Bill Hunter, a developer at Wexford. The building is within walking distance of UM’s medical school and stem cell institute.

“We’re making a market down here,” Hunter told The Real Deal. “It’s the halo effect, it’s going to spread out and create more tech start-ups,” he said.

Kidney specialist company DaVita just inked a 20,000-square-foot lease. It will collaborate with the university, using members of the Division of Interventional Nephrology to collect and analyze patient data for studies related to kidney diseases and other illnesses.

“We have one of the most diverse populations in the world – a melting pot of melting pots. It’s a doctor’s dream,” said Hunter.

UM’s tissue bank is the building’s largest tenant and one of the site’s major draws. UM has a separate brain endowment bank, and many of the building’s other users center around harvesting tissue for research and use, Hunter said. International and early-stage companies include university spin-offs, like Cirle, a spin-off from Dr. Richard Awdeh’s work at the University of Miami-affiliated Bascom Palmer Eye Institute.

The biggest ground-floor tenant of the Life Sciences building is the Miami Innovation Center, an open, 40,800-square-foot space, and the headquarters of Project LIFT, a business “accelorator” where young companies spend a several-month stint in a co-working environment, learning marketing and branding tips and meeting potential investors and partners.

Ali Khoshnevis, one of the Project LIFT participants, invented software that allows patients to compare the price of pharmaceuticals in their neighborhoods.

“For example, the generic of Lipitor can cost anywhere from $11 to $150,” Khoshnevis said, whose company, WeRx, has a fully developed program as a downloadable application in The App Store and is focused on marketing.

Crystal Ice is the top executive of AlertMD, another tech-based company, that allows users to sign up for a smartphone app that aggregates their medical history, assigning each person a code that can be read in the case of a medical emergency.

The company came down to Miami from West Palm Beach a month ago to prepare for the launch of its pilot program later this month. It may not have to go far to find clients.

“A woman was brought in and she wasn’t identified for days and days. All she had with her was a Smartphone, but it was locked. You only have 24 hours to harvest organs,” Ice said.

From left, Mayor Matti Herrera Bower and the Miami Beach Convention Center

Miami Beach commissioners balked at a proposed “labor peace” agreement in contracts to revamp the city’s convention center, sending it back to the city attorney’s office for clarification, the Miami Herald reported.

Two firms, led by developers Jack Portman of Atlanta and Dan Tishman of New York, are waiting for the city to decide the winner of the $1.2 billion project, which involves the convention center and developing a 52-acre parcel of public land around it.

Mayor Matti Herrera Bower said she feared the agreement could complicate a project already threatened by a public corruption investigation and by a petition led by a city commissioner, according to the Herald.

“It gives me a reason to believe that this is going to be a problem, and so I am afraid,” she told the newspaper.

Each team boasts internationally recognized architects and has proposed expansive plans for mixed-use space that includes retail, hospitality and public parks.

An attorney for one project pledged that the project’s convention center and some landscaping would be paid for by the city through hotel bed tax, while private developers would pay for the balance, including a hotel, retail area and landscaping.

A labor peace agreement typically would ask contractors at the completed convention center not to fight their employees’ efforts to unionize. Unions, in turn, would not picket, strike or otherwise campaign against their employer.

A labor peace agreement would ask contractors at the completed convention center not to fight their employees’ efforts to unionize. The unions, in turn, would not picket, strike or otherwise campaign against the employer. The agreement would not apply to construction work on the wider 52-acre district, the Herald said. [Miami Herald] –Emily Schmall

Protesters outside Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo agreed to pay a $39 million settlement in a federal housing discrimination complaint, the Sun Sentinel reported.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development accused the bank giant of failing to maintain foreclosed homes in primarily black and Latino communities.

The bank will distribute $39 million West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale and about 45 other cities nationwide hurt by the housing downturn, the Sentinel said.

The National Fair Housing Alliance, which participated in the settlement, said it will manage the money with assistance from local nonprofits, providing down-payment grants to prospective homebuyers in targeted neighborhoods. [Sun Sentinel] –Emily Schmall

Bedroom at Icon South Beach condo

Today’s priciest new listing is a two-bedroom, two-and-a-half bathroom condominium at Icon South Beach asking $2.69 million. The 1,750-square-feet home is located at 450 Alton Road, unit No. 2805, in Miami Beach. It features Italian furniture, BOSE sound system and modern, stained wood floors and electrical blinds. The building has two pools and a restaurant. Despina Ikonomidou of Cervera Real Estate has the listing. (Condo Vultures data include condos and single-family listings in the main metropolitan areas of Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, as well as Monroe County that are newly listed. Listings are taken from the South Florida MLS.) –Mark Maurer

Fisher Island in Miami

Fifteen privately owned units are now available for short stays at the new hotel and resort Provident Luxury Suites Fisher Island, bringing a bevy of newcomers to the island enclave, which is only accessible by ferry.

Clearwater, Fla.-based management company Provident Hotels & Resorts will offer one-, two- or three-bedroom units that range from $513 to $1,323 for the weekend starting Friday, June 14, the Miami Herald reported.

By December, 45 suites will be available for short-term stays. Guests must pre-register for the ferry after reserving a room, the Herald said.

Provident is not associated with the Fisher Island Club resort. In March, renovations were completed at the Racquet Club and the Links Golf Club, both facilities within the Fisher Island Club. They had their interiors stripped and built back out with stone and mill work. [Miami Herald] –Mark Maurer

One Thousand Ocean in Boca Raton

UPDATED, 4:08 p.m., June 6: A penthouse known as “The Shore” at the oceanfront condominium building One Thousand Ocean in Boca Raton has sold to an undisclosed buyer for $11.7 million, or $1,547 per square foot, according to a release from the development.

That makes it the third largest sale for a condominium in Palm Beach County history. The highest-dollar condo transaction was $17.45 million for a 5,798-square-foot penthouse at Il Lugano Palm Beach on May 15, followed by $11.95 million for a condo and cabana at Two North Breakers Row in Palm Beach, the Palm Beach Daily News had reported.

The 7,550-square-foot condo also has 4,591 square feet of wraparound terraces. It features a private elevator lobby, 14-foot ceilings, glass walls, an outdoor kitchen, a private poolside cabana and a private three-car garage.

Tim Shane of Meridian Realty represented the buyer for the deal. The building’s developer is LXR Luxury Resorts & Hotels.

This is the building’s fifth and final penthouse to be sold, and the fourth one sold since March. A 4,628-square-foot penthouse known as “The Sky” sold to an undisclosed buyer for $7 million last month, as previously reported. All but two of the 53 residences in the building have been sold. – Mark Maurer

From left, Vanessa Grout, Douglas Elliman’s Florida CEO, and the Ritz Carlton on Key Biscayne

Douglas Elliman is bringing its top 100 top-producing agents to Miami next week for a retreat on how to draw more wealthy buyers from Greater New York and overseas to South Florida, the company told The Real Deal today.

Dottie Herman

“A large portion will be devoted to educating our agents and managers from across the company about our spectacular new developments in South Florida, so they can provide the best insights to their clients,” Dottie Herman, Douglas Elliman’s president and chief executive, said in an email.

The four-day retreat, which begins Sunday at the Ritz Carlton Key Biscayne, will be packed with field trips to new developments and the brokerage’s top exclusive listings across South Florida. The agents represent clients in both South Florida and New York, including New York City, Long Island, Westchester County and the Hamptons.

“A lot of the buyers we’re seeing in South Florida right now, especially in these new developments, are from the New York metropolitan area,” Vanessa Grout, Douglas Elliman’s Florida chief executive, said in a news release.

Quarterly reports for Miami are available in Spanish and Portuguese.

The tours will include Ian Schrager’s The Residences at the Miami Beach Edition, where two adjacent penthouses sold for $34 million earlier this year, setting a record for the region’s most expensive condo transaction; Faena House, where Elliman hopes to shatter records with a $50 million penthouse; and Palau Sunset Harbour, a 45-unit complex that is 100 percent reserved pre-construction.

Herman also announced that Douglas Elliman will continue its push to bring more foreign investors to South Florida by rolling out a new global campaign this fall with international affiliate Knight Frank residential. On its website, the property consultancy lists homes in Botswana, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Bahrain, Qatar, Hong Kong, South Korea, Vietnam and across Europe. –Emily Schmall

Colony Capital founder and chairman Tom Barrack

Colony American Homes, a major property owner in South Florida, postponed its initial public offering as stock market jitters reach real-estate investment trusts, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Colony American Homes is a real estate investment trust  that buys single-family homes from foreclosure auctions and banks and manages them as rental properties; today, its land holdings in South Florida number in the hundreds, according to the Palm Beach Post. Parent company Colony Capital announced earlier this year it planned to buy an estimated 1,000 South Florida homes to rehabilitate and rent in target areas including Palm Beach, St. Lucie, Broward and Miami-Dade counties.

An April SEC filing shows that Colony spent $177 million to buy 1,242 Florida homes within the previous six months. Nationwide, the company spent $1.2 billion to buy 8,764 homes in nine states, the Post reported.

Company executives and bankers decided to delay the IPO late Tuesday evening because of adverse market conditions, according to the Journal, citing an unnamed source.

Colony American had expected to raise as much as $245 million in the IPO, even as REIT stocks have taken a slide since late May amid expectations the Federal Reserve could raise interest rates.

While investors remain bullish on real estate, it remains unclear whether Colony American and other new REITs can efficiently rent and manage large portfolios of houses and apartment buildings, Andrew Schaffler, an investment analyst at Cohen & Steers Inc., told the Journal.

“It’s still very early in the life cycle of the industry and we want to see some of these companies fine-tune their operations,” Schaffler said. [WSJ] –Emily Schmall

Airbnb founders

From the New York site: Web-based home sharing service Airbnb has taken the unusual step of representing a user in court, appealing a fine an Airbnb user was instructed to pay in administrative court in Manhattan on his behalf, WNYC reported.

Nigel Warren, who owns a condominium that he rented to a Russian visitor for three nights, was fined $2,400 for violating the city’s hotel laws, which now prohibit short-term subleasing.

The website’s representatives noted the risks of engaging the city on the issue, but said they believed it was important to fight for individuals’ rights to rent person-to-person using their service.

“We know that by stepping up and fighting for Nigel and our community, we have made ourselves a target and will now face attacks in the press and from people who do not understand who our community really is,” said David Hantman, Airbnb’s head of global public policy, in a blog post cited by WNYC. “But the amazing activity that is happening in New York and other cities around the world is worth fighting for.”

Airbnb is represented by Gibson Dunn & Crutcher. [WNYC] –Guelda Voien

Aerial view of proposed Airport City

Odebrecht USA, a subsidiary of Brazilian publicly-traded construction and engineering giant Odebrecht SA, is conducting a poll to gauge the popularity of Airport City, its massive new project proposed for Miami International Airport, the Miami Herald reported.

Odebrecht’s $512 million proposal for the swath of land at the entrance to Miami’s airport, including a Florida International University medical compound, a 400-room hotel, a lounge for cruise passengers, a 1,900-space parking garage and an energy supply center, was submitted in 2009.

The project still awaits approval from the city commission, slowed down by a lawsuit over a controversial Florida law that prohibits local governments from hiring firms with business ties to Cuba, but a federal appeals court ruled in the company’s favor last month.

Odebrecht USA’s telephone poll asks participants whether they are familiar with the company, the project and the number of jobs Odebrecht estimates will be created by new construction, the Herald said.

“Airport City is an important project for this community, and Odebrecht feels that we may want to inform the public more about it,” Rik Katz, Odebrecht’s corporate relations consultant who is conducting the poll, told the Herald. [Miami Herald] –Emily Schmall

Jorge Pérez

After placing a big bet on condo development that nearly sunk the company in the real estate crisis, Miami-based Related Group has decided to hedge against risk by returning to its lucrative roots – affordable housing and rental apartment properties, Daily Business Review reported.

“When we saw what happened in the last cycle, we decided to go back to our roots and reinvigorate the affordable housing division and increase the multifamily rental division, which is a much safer type of development,” Related principal Jorge Pérez told the Review. “We also created an acquisition division, which buys distressed assets all over the country.”

Related has 50 projects in the pipeline, including a retail project in Doral, the Venezuelan enclave in Miami-Dade County, and a waterfront entertainment complex on Watson Island, Matt Allen, Related’s chief operating officer, told the Review.

“You look at where we are situated today and, if the economy ever slows down, we are positioned very well” to overcome another recession, Allen said. [Daily Business Review] –Emily Schmall

2400 Bay Drive in Pompano Beach

Today’s priciest new listing is a six-bedroom, six-bathroom single-family home asking $2.4 million. The 5,876-square-feet home is located at 2400 Bay Drive in Pompano Beach on the Hillsboro Bay Inlet. It features “volume ceilings & walls of glass opening to a breezy ocean view loggia,” the listing said. Ronald Lennen of Premier Estate Properties has the listing. (Condo Vultures data include condos and single-family listings in the main metropolitan areas of Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, as well as Monroe County that are newly listed. Listings are taken from the South Florida MLS.) –Mark Maurer

University of Miami’s Life Science and Technology Park’s first building

Kidney care company DaVita signed a lease for 20,000 square feet at University of Miami’s Life Science and Technology Park at 1951 Northwest Seventh Avenue in Downtown Miami, according to a park spokesperson.

The space will be used for an office and clinic on the fifth floor of the 8.8.-acre Life Science and Technology Park’s first building, which is now 75 percent occupied. The Miami Innovation Center, Subway, Thea Pizzeria & Café and Balans Restaurant are among the other tenants in the building.

DaVita will also be linked to the school in that members of the Division of Interventional Nephrology will collect and analyze patient data for studies related to kidney diseases and other ailments, the statement said. The national company operates 44 facilities in South Florida, a spokesperson said.

Blanca Commercial Real Estate was hired last July to head up the marketing and leasing for the Life Science & Technology Park. The 252,000-square-foot building opened in 2011. – Mark Maurer

Jill Eber and Jill Hertzberg

Jill Hertzberg and Jill Eber, whose team the Jills is the highest-grossing in Coldwell Banker’s history,  land big listings and lure high-end buyers because they “control that inventory,” they told  the South Florida Business Journal.

“They’re going to come to us whether it’s a buyer or a seller,” Eber told the publication. “We’re really fortunate because of our name.”

They were behind the most expensive sale ever in Miami Beach. Last month, the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez sold his “party pad” at 4358 North Bay Road to beer distributor Stephen Levin for $30 million. Also, Gianni Versace’s former home, Casa Casuarina, at 1116 Ocean Drive is listed for $75 million, a significant drop from its $125 million initial ask.

The best way to market properties, the Jills said, is to be consistent and try every avenue of social media, print and word-of-mouth.

“The world is rapidly changing and morphing; you have to be open to new ways,” Hertzberg told the Business Journal. “It’s constant. You can’t stop.” [South Florida Business Journal] – Mark Maurer

From left: Michael Gross, Ian Schrager and the Delano Hotel

The hotelier that owns the Delano South Beach scored a small victory in a battle for control of its board when a proxy-advisory firm recommended that its shareholders not vote for the nominees put up by its biggest shareholder, Bloomberg reported.

Morgans Hotel Group Co., founded by developer Ian Schrager and Studio 4’s Steve Rubell, announced the recommendation today; Institutional Shareholder Services Inc., according to Morgan CEO Michael Gross, identified “significant deficiencies” with the seven candidates offered by OTK Associates LLC that makes them “incapable of representing the interests of all shareholders.”

OTK owns about 14 percent of New York-based Morgans, which wants to fill six of the seats. The seventh director would be chosen by OTK, proportional to its share of ownership. OTK did not respond to Bloomberg’s request for comment.

Current board members are set to meet June 14 for their annual meeting.

The fight stems from OTK’s goal of returning Morgans to profitability. Morgans is struggling to recover from a bad deal it made during the height of the financial crisis — a $72 million infusion of cash from investment firm the Yucaipa Companies, founded by billionaire Ron Burkle.

“OTK has failed to offer a credible plan to create value for shareholders and address Morgans’ significant balance sheet and capital structure challenges,” Gross said in a statement. Gross is Yucaipa’s director on the board.

On Tuesday, Morgans announced that it has received five expressions of interest in a takeover and would consider a sale. The news sent Morgans stock to its highest price in almost two years.

In the 2009 deal, Yucaipa gave the money through a private investment in public equity, or PIPE, in exchange for: as many as 12.5 million shares; the right to nominate a director, who turned out to be Gross; and veto power over a sale of the company or any of its assets as well as acquisitions worth more than $100 million.

Today, Yucaipa owns nearly 28 percent of Morgans, has bought $88 million of its debt and holds half of hundreds of millions of dollars of Morgans’ mortgage debt that is coming due in the next two years.

Now, Morgans is trying to undo its first bad deal with another complicated one, giving Yucaipa the Delano South Beach and its nightclub and food and beverage management business in exchange for cancellation of many options of the first deal. The second transaction, though, is on hold after being successfully challenged in court by OTK. [Bloomberg] —Melanie Gray

Alex Rey

Alex Rey, a banking and financing real estate expert and former FDIC trustee, has joined Colliers International’s South Florida investment sales team, the company said in a release.

Colliers International, a subsidiary of publicly-traded FirstService Corporation, is the world’s third-largest commercial real estate services company.

“Alex’s 20-plus years handling a wide variety of real estate transactions from acquisition and disposition through development, financing and asset management, make him a strong addition to our team,” Stephen Nostrand, Colliers International South Florida’s chief executive, said in the release.

“Alex’s experience in multifamily development will elevate the success that we have been accelerating for our clients,” Nostrand said.

Rey leaves a post heading strategic accounts and partnerships for Credomatic of Florida Inc., a banking and credit card merchant services company and subsidiary of Grupo Aval, a Colombian $48 billion publicly-traded banking group controlled by billionaire Luis Carlos Sarmiento Angulo. He was the company’s top producer in 2011 and 2012, according to Colliers.

A licensed real estate broker, Rey worked closely with the Office of Community Development and Miami-Dade County on a range of affordable housing and economic development projects from 1992 to 2006. He also advised institutions and businesses on acquisitions and workout agreements in the Caribbean and South Florida, according to the release. –Emily Schmall

At left, BIG’s Miami Beach Convention Center design; Portman vice chairman Jack Portman and chief executive Ambrish Baisiwala at opening of team’s expo space

A kaleidoscope of colorful dress, painted Styrofoam models and life size renderings made the street-level, all-glass space off Miami Beach’s Lincoln Road like a fishbowl full of tropical fish.

Portman CMC, a group of developers and architects vying for Miami Beach’s $1.2 billion convention center project, opened an exhibit space off the Lincoln Road shopping district late on Tuesday, the first stage of a final push for the bid.

The city plans to announce a winner in mid-July.

Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, whose design firm BIG is part of the Portman team, was on hand for Miami Beach residents to quiz about “living walls,” the architect’s term for the jungly effect of interspersing vines and other plants into concrete.

Ingel’s rival for the bid is a consortium led by his former boss, Pritzker Prize-winning architect Rem Koolhaas, and his Office for Metropolitan Architecture, the Rotterdam-based firm where Ingels, 38, worked in his early 20s.

“From the top down and the bottom up, there’s been a flourishing art scene, Art Basel, from the top down, and all kinds of urban interventions, which makes it a vibrant place,” Ingels told The Real Deal on Monday.

“You definitely feel that Miami has become the capital of the United States of Latin America and I think that influx of affluent Latin Americans has a positive impact on the whole region.”

Behind Ingels is an aerial view of the project plotted in Styrofoam, spongy colorful stacks demonstrating the curves in his proposed convention center and vibrant life size renderings.

Portman executives argue the 52-acre project – in which the city will cover the cost of the convention center and some landscaping, while leasing the land for private development – will generate Miami Beach $80 million more in revenue than their competitor and be finished 19 months sooner.

Ingels’ hyperbolic design is centered around a public town square, intersected multiple ways by lush pedestrian walkways and parks.

South Beach ACE, the other team up for the bid, offers a project equal and enormous in scope.

Miami Beach developer Robert Wennett, who commissioned Herzog & de Meuron to design the striking parking garage at 1111 Lincoln Road Mall, brought in Koolhaas when he joined Tishman Hotels and Realty, the New York developer erecting the tower at the World Trade Center site.

Portman chairman John Portman, Jr. designed Atlanta’s enormous indoor space, the Peachtree Center, and myriad hotels built in the 1970s and 1980s across the U.S. with his signature atrium, including New York’s Marriott Marquis.

“Where we really nailed it was in creating the right kind of urban experience,” John “Jack” Portman II, the company’s vice chairman, told TRD.

Ironically, South Beach’s design has more in common with those buildings than the Portman project, with a unified space centered around a plaza connected to atria.

Koolhaas and OMA are also involved in Argentine developer Alan Faena’s multi-use project surrounding a Roman and Williams redesign of the Saxony Hotel in South Beach and a new Norman Foster condo tower.

Landscape architect Jamie Maslyn Larson, a principal of New York-based West 8, which is currently designing a 30-acre park on New York’s Governor’s Island, said the Portman project will reduce environmental impact by using native plants, such as gumbo limbo, live oak and mahogany trees; buttonwoods and coco plum shrubs; Fakahatchee grass and leathern ferns, and by keeping “almost everything in the ground.”

Fla. Governor Rick Scott

Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed into law Tuesday a plan for a $200 million chunk of the $25 billion nationwide foreclosure settlement agreement between lenders and states, the Tampa Bay Tribune reported.

Florida will spend its share on housing- and foreclosure-assistance programs, including mortgage counseling services, legal aid groups and Habitat for Humanity, the Tribune reported, citing Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The $200 million is a small chunk of the state’s $8.4 billion cut from the deal, including $7.6 billion for loan modifications and other “direct relief,” the newspaper reported, citing Bondi’s website.

“It’s so much money that it needed accountability,” Bondi told reporters Tuesday. “It’s hard to write checks just directly out there … That’s why we’re going through various agencies, to ensure money goes where it’s supposed to go.”

Scott still has not acted on a bill (HB 87) passed this legislative session that would speed up the state’s foreclosure process. Homeowner advocates have asked Scott to veto it. Florida’s foreclosure process has been tainted by “robo-signers,” people who signed paperwork handing over mortgages without knowing what they were signing. [Tampa Bay Tribune] –Emily Schmall

Kevin Maloney

Residential development offers a quick way in and a clear exit, Property Markets Group principal  Kevin Maloney told the New York Times in explaining the company’s portfolio.

“Everything we do is residential in nature, and it has an exit. So it’s either an exit as a condominium, and we sell it, or we’ll rent it up and sell it to a REIT or a third party. We don’t want to be long on real estate,” said Maloney, who is putting up luxury condominiums in South Florida.

Business is “busier than it’s ever been,” Maloney said, with condo prices and the rental market rising in New York and South Florida. PMG has 15 buildings under construction.

Based in New York, PMG has offices in Miami and Chicago. Two of its South Florida projects are  Echo Aventura and Sage Beach in Hollywood, Fla.

Maloney told the newspaper that he is more involved with acquisition and construction than fellow principal Elliott Joseph. “Elliott’s more of a deal guy,” he said.

“The firm used to be Gary Barnett, now of Extell Development; Ziel Feldman, now of HFZ Capital; and I; and then Elliott. Gary left in ’95; Ziel left in 2005,” Maloney said. [NYT] –Emily Schmall

Paramount Bay in Miami

Today’s priciest new listing is a four-bedroom, four-bathroom penthouse condominium at Paramount Bay asking $4.65 million.

The 2,694-square-foot home is located at 2020 North Bayshore Drive, unit 4005, in Miami. It features a 2,950-square-foot terrace and private elevator. The building comes complete with a spa, gym, sunset and sunrise pools, valet, concierge, a party room and a business room. Cecilia Solorzano of Setai Realty has the listing. (Condo Vultures data include condos and single-family listings in the main metropolitan areas of Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, as well as Monroe County that are newly listed. Listings are taken from the South Florida MLS.) –Mark Maurer

From left: Mort Zuckerman and Jonathan Tisch

Despite the fact that Jonathan Tisch and Mort Zuckerman are both commercial real estate investors, the two have opposing outlooks on the economic recovery, GlobeSt reported, based on remarks they made at today’s New York University Hospitality Conference in Manhattan.

For Tisch, co-chairman of the board of Loews Corporation, who recently sat down for a Closing interview with The Real Deal, travel is key.

“Travel is emerging as a key driver of the recovery,” Tisch told the crowd. “I see a long-term boom for travel.” By 2016, 800 million additional travelers will board planes and ostensibly occupy hotel rooms.

But Boston Properties Chairman Zuckerman was less optimistic.

“We need a recovery program to recover from our recovery,” he said at the conference. “I just don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel.”

Considering the state of the recovery, “we’re very vulnerable to any kind of shock,” he added.

But Zuckerman’s perspective appeared to stand on its own. Speaking of the travel aspect, Hilton President and CEO Chris Nassetta, also voiced optimism.

“We’re bullish and we’ve earned it,” he said at the talk. “The economy isn’t super-charged and that suggests a longer upcycle.” [GlobeSt] –Zachary Kussin

One Biscayne Tower in Miami

Law firm Foreman Friedman signed an 11-year, $6 million deal to renew and expand its offices by 15,000 square feet at One Biscayne Tower in Miami, the building’s exclusive leasing agent, Taylor & Mathis, said in a release.

Brian Gale, Andrew Trench, Ryan Holtzman and Jeannette Mendoza of Taylor & Mathis negotiated the deal, which was co-brokered by John Marshall of Cresa Partners. The 39-story skyscraper, located at 2 South Biscayne Boulevard, has 700,000 square feet. In what was the tower’s largest lease last year, law firm Foley & Lardner signed a 36,531-square-foot-lease with owner L&B Institutional Fund for $15 million.

Taylor & Mathis – which has offices in Tampa, Miami, Sunrise and Orlando – has handled 13 deals totaling 285,000 square feet in Downtown Miami and Brickell so far this year, the release said. –Mark Maurer

Albert Dotson

With the Miami Beach City Commission poised to select a winner of two teams vying for its $1.2 billion convention center bid July 8, attorney Al Dotson, who represents South Beach ACE, pledged that residents “won’t have to pay a penny” for the project, Daily Business Review reported.

The city decided last year to partner with a developer to redevelop the city-owned 52-acre site that includes the boxy convention center, the site of Miami’s annual Art Basel; the Jackie Gleason Theater and the city botanical gardens.

The city would issue bonds to pay for half of the project, its share financing the cost of expansion and renovation of the convention center, public parking and landscaping. The bonds would be paid with a 1 percent resort tax, convention center revenue and parking fees.

The private partner will contribute a hotel, retail space and private parking and pay rent on an under the ground lease near the rent-rich outdoor Lincoln Road mall.

South Beach ACE, which consists of New York-based Tishman Hotel & Realty and Miami Beach-based UIA Management, with Rem Koolhaas’ OMA as architects, is competing for the project against Portman CMC, a partnership between Atlanta-based Portman Holdings LLC and Miami-based CMC Group Inc. that boasts Bjarke Ingels Group as its lead architect. [Daily Business Review] –Emily Schmall

Brickell CityCentre diagram

Swire Properties elected its East affiliate among several interested hotel brands to design the hotel portion of its massive multi-use City Center development, the Miami Herald reported.

The 236-room East Miami will be the brand’s first in the United States, with two other hotels in Hong Kong and Beijing. The building will also offer 89 apartments with hotel services, two restaurants, a meeting room and a rooftop bar, according to the Herald.

East Miami will price lower than the Mandarin Oriental, which Swire developed and has a stake in, Swire Properties President Stephen Owens told the Herald.

“It has a sort of dynamic energy that we thought would really complement what we’re doing at Brickell CityCentre,” he said.

Construction on the $1.05 billion development west of Brickell Avenue and south of the Miami River is set to begin in September, with the hotel set to be finished by the third quarter of 2015, the Herald said. [Miami Herald] –Emily Schmall

Courtesy of Condo Vultures

Foreclosures in South Florida rose 15 percent to 21,016 from a year ago on the weight of activity in Miami-Dade County, Condo Vultures statistics show.

In Miami-Dade, there were 8,243 foreclosures as of May 31, a 76 percent jump from the 4,687 foreclosures as of the same date a year ago. Foreclosures slightly declined in Broward and Palm Beach, to 8,229 from 8,808 and 4,544 from 4,761 in the respective counties.

There were 3,871 foreclosures in South Florida last month, a 1 percent decline from the 3,927 foreclosures recorded in May 2012.

In February, 42.2 percent of Miami-area real estate sales – about two-thirds of which were all-cash deals — were of “distressed” properties in some stage of foreclosure, nearly double the 23 percent of total sales distressed properties accounted for in February 2012, Miami Association of Realtors data show. –Emily Schmall

From left, Asi Cymbal and Bjarke Ingels and Marina Lofts rendering.

Bjarke Ingels wants the public to understand that bold, urban architecture can create sustainable ecosystems. It is a principle that he is fighting for: Right now, the award-winning Danish architect is battling Fort Lauderdale over his residential project, Marina Lofts, and the fate of a rain tree.

The 38-year-old architect gave a presentation Monday at the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, the first of three consecutive starchitect-studded South Florida real estate events this week, on his firm, Bjarke Ingels Group, and its 12-year evolution from designing residential buildings in his native Copenhagen to the conceptually playful Marina Lofts.

Famous for his Ted talk and a slate of awards for innovative design, Ingels is part of a growing cast of internationally-renowned architects with projects currently underway in South Florida.

As part of Portman CMC, Ingels is going head-to-head with his former practice, OMA, the urban design team of Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, for a $1.2 billion bid to redesign the Miami Beach Convention Center. Portman will unveil a three-dimensional representation of its blueprints for the redesign on Tuesday, offering up Ingels and two colleagues for questions.

Later in the week, Ingels will attend the Terra Group’s groundbreaking ceremony of his curvy residential towers in Coconut Grove, the Grand at Grove Bay.

The Marina Lofts project may be the most polemic of the three.

The uneven residential towers with Lego-like pieces built out of each to create an opening that expands public access to the New River are considered by some as an important stamp of innovative design in floundering downtown Fort Lauderdale, while others oppose the project because it seeks to uproot and replant a nearly century-old tree.

The 998-unit rental building would offer units starting at $1,100, an attractive prospect in a market environment of rapidly-rising rental rates and a housing shortage.

The developer, Asaf Cymbal, a Brooklyn native and Vassar and UCLA Law graduate who also owns a restaurant and bar in Miami Midtown, said he interviewed at least 12 architects before selecting Ingels, whose firm BIG received notoriety for its innovative residential buildings in Copenhagan.

The site currently boasts a small marina and boat storage and a protected rain tree the developers plan to relocate to the southern end of the site, which they would donate as a public park.

Environmental activists and others oppose the project, saying it threatens city and natural history. Cymbal said he consulted with the world’s foremost arborists, pledging a $1 million bond on the tree surviving in its new spot.

After eight hours of public debate, the project prevailed at a recent meeting of the city’s Planning and Zoning Board. The City Commission will vote either July 2 or August 20, Cymbal said.

Ingels is known as much for his politics as his design, from Copenhagen’s future trash-to-fuel plant belching C02 smoke rings, a symbol and public reminder of the cost of consumption, to the Dutch pavilion at the Shangai Expo 2010 on sustainable cities, where the Scandinavian capital’s famous mermaid graced one floor of the bikeable swirly structure, projected back to Denmark through an installation by the dissident Chinese artist Ai Weise, who in effect broadcast China’s only uncensored live TV stream.

The youthful architect seemed to revel in the politics of the Marina Lofts project.

“It’s my impression that Fort Lauderdale is capable of delivering quite incredible public participation for a project such as Marina Lofts,” he said. “It’s normally exclusively the negative voices who show up whereas in Fort Lauderdale, it was really a marvel to see supporters almost like threatening to go beyond the capacity of the space.”

He described the contest for the Miami Beach Convention Center as “a complex political process” and had to navigate the tenets of green design to win local approval for BIG’s two female silhouetted condo towers on the site of the recently demolished Grand Bay Hotel in Coconut Grove.

“Our vision was to create an eco-conscious residential project so sculptural and visually spectacular that it would become a statement for a new Coconut Grove,”
Terra Group co-founder David Martin said last week, announcing the project’s ground breaking.

“When I met Bjarke, I knew instantly he was the right architect,” Cymbal told The Real Deal, adding he learned to appreciate great design from growing up in a public housing project in Brooklyn. “We met in a bar in Tribeca, I think it was the Odeon?”

“The Odeon, where Bret Easton Ellis used to scribble Less Than Zero and American Psycho,” added Ingels with a chuckle.

BIG set up a satellite office in New York a year and a half ago after being commissioned by Durst/Fetner to design a luxury condo tower sandwiched between Manhattan’s West Side Highway and 57th Street in Hell’s Kitchen. The result is a distorted pyramid that maximizes residents’ exposure to the sun and leaves open a miniature of Central Park.

Cymbal, who grew up in a Coney Island housing project, striking out as a South Florida real estate investor about eight years ago, said he was fascinated by Ingel’s portfolio, illustrated as a comic book (Ingels had intended to draw comics when he went to university), and a Ted talk on hedonistic sustainability, an idea that design should be fun and serve not only the function but the “dream” of modern societies.

The developer and the architect favor vast communal spaces over the suburbs, maintaining their sense of whimsy and wonder and possibility as a way around grim environmental predictors.

“I think my generation maybe doesn’t have this Edward Scissorhands kind of fantasy about a suburban home,” Ingels said. “Maybe they actually want to opt for a more urban lifestyle and the cultural and social elements living in a more city-like environment can offer.”

In South Florida, Ingels is part of a growing cast of internationally-renowned architects active in the region as all-cash deals on real estate from international investors fuel a boom in spending following the market crash five years ago.

“I think development in South Florida has until recently been almost exclusively car-dependent and as such it’s a been a quite suburbanized urban landscape,” Ingels said.

“I think what you’re seeing now as a tendency is an interest in creating well-functioning urban cores that have a human scale, that have mobility, that have attractive outdoor spaces. In that way, what we’re doing here, in Coconut Grove and Miami Beach is somehow similar even though each has its own ingredients.”

Key Biscayne, a French enclave in South Florida

French buyers’ interest in South Florida properties is growing as the region continues to lure the most international real estate investment in the U.S., according to an analysis of activity on Miamire.com, a Miami Association of Realtors Web site.

France, perhaps surprising some, ranked as the top country searching for Miami properties on the site in April 2013, according to the association. The French language is twice as commonly spoken as Portuguese, and France has had a presence in the region since the 1600s.

Canada, Brazil and Venezuela were the top countries of origin for the majority of Florida buyers last year, Miami has been the Sunshine State’s biggest real estate magnet, where tens of thousands of pre-construction condos in the pipeline were paid 9 out of 10 times in cash. –Emily Schmall