Miami’s Canyon Ranch condo-resort on the block

A subsidiary of Lehman Brothers Holdings has put Canyon Ranch Hotel & Spa Miami Beach on the market along with its next-door neighbor, the development site of the long-shuttered Golden Sands hotel, according to CBRE, the listings’ broker.

Lehman ended up owner of Canyon Ranch, the swanky condo-hotel with a 65,000-square-foot spa, after developer Eric Sheppard defaulted on more than $200 million in loans.

The properties, listed without a price, including Canyon Ranch’s common areas, including swimming pools and spa, the lobby and restaurant, and a handful of condo-hotel units and townhomes, as well as the Golden Sands site. Canyon Ranch, which the estate of then-bankrupt Lehman inherited with only about 200 of 580 units sold, has been nearly 100-percent sold as of the last six months, according to a Lehman spokesperson.

A year ago, eight penthouses at Canyon Ranch sold within two hours for a cumulative $7 million, as The Real Deal previously reported.

“For highly-competitive assets like these, we don’t want to cap pricing. Miami Beach has proven that people reach for the sky,” said Christian Charre, a senior vice president of CBRE’s hotels division, who is paired up with CBRE vice chairman Robert Given of the multi-family division to represent the Lehman Holdings subsidiary, FL 6801 Spirits LLC and subsidiaries.

While still in the throes of its own bankruptcy, Lehman Brothers became owner of Canyon Ranch in lieu of foreclosure in November 2009. Lehman took ownership of the adjacent Golden Sands, a low-rise hotel built in 1951, in 2012.

Sheppard, a Miami Beach native, has no remaining ties to the Canyon Ranch management company that now runs the building, the tower itself or the Golden Sands, which he bought for $19 million intending to raze and replace with a 20-story condo tower.

Potential buyers are already making their interest known, Charre told TRD. “A lot of developers have had their eyes on Golden Sands, a lot of people have been following Lehman for when they would dispose of the asset. There are a lot of people lining up,” he said, adding that he expects the sale of the two properties – whether separately or together – to draw U.S. and Latin American private-equity groups with appetites for property and cash.