Miami is taking a gamble that Jorge Pérez and Stephen Ross can
step in and finish a mega-yacht complex on Watson Island that has stalled for
12 years, the Miami Herald reported.
Last week Miami’s city commission voted to give the project’s
current developer, Flagstone Island Gardens, a lease extension that grants
additional time to start building. The commission expects that in this time,
Pérez’s Related Group and Ross’s New York-based Related Companies will become
co-developers on the project, which they say will cost more than $1 billion,
the Herald said.
Related’s pitch to jump into the project, for which Flagstone
won a bid in 2001, includes more than doubling planned retail space from
220,000 square feet to 500,000 square feet; adding an additional 100 hotel beds
from 605 to 705; and adding 100,000 square feet of new convention center space
to the tiny man-made island in Biscayne Bay, according to the newspaper.
Only
one commissioner – Frank Carollo – cast a vote against extending Flagstone’s
lease, arguing the project be rebid and put to a public referendum again. *
Source The Real Deal & Miami Herald.
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