Rehab buildings targeted by Crescent Heights for redevelopment score county approval

Crescent Heights’ bid to purchase a drug addiction rehab clinic in Edgewater cleared its first government hurdle on Friday.

The Miami-Dade County Plat Committee approved the company’s request to replat three low-rise buildings at 3055 Northeast Fourth Avenue and 400 Northeast 31st Street into a single redevelopment site totaling 30,225 square feet, called CH Metro.

Representatives for Crescent Heights could not immediately be reached for comment, but company co-founder and Miami Beach developer Russell Galbut recently told the Miami Herald he is negotiating to buy the Village South, a substance abuse treatment complex that has been in Edgewater since the 1970s, when the neighborhood was a seedy destination, known for drug dealing and street prostitution. The deal would also include a four-story, 28-bed rehab home across the street at 3031 Northeast Fourth Avenue.

The replatting of the properties is necessary to complete the sale. The closing is also pending other approvals from the city of Miami. Current zoning allows up to 36 stories. The three properties have a combined fair market value of $10 million, according to the Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser. The Village Foundation, the current owner, paid a combined $63,000 for the properties in 1977.

Galbut did not specify if he is planning a condo tower or an apartment building, and said that he doesn’t plan to do anything with the site until the real estate market picks up again. “We’re planning a whole community,” Galbut told the paper. “It will have a little bit of everything.”

Crescent Heights owns an 8-acre assemblage made up of mostly surface parking lots and office and retail buildings just south of the Village building on Biscayne Boulevard. The parcels on Northeast Fourth Avenue are very close to Related Group’s Paraiso Bay and another condo project called Naranza.