Related Group to start construction on three new towers

The Related Group has a busy Thursday scheduled this week, with the Miami-based condo developer planning in a three-hour period to launch construction on three new towers and formally start presales on a fourth high-rise in Greater Downtown Miami.

Word of the scheduled groundbreaking and presale launch in the same day comes a week after Related announced it topped off two other condo towers: the 43-story, 299-unit ICON Bay and the 15-story, 167-unit Baltus House.

On Thursday at 10 a.m., Related plans to host a groundbreaking ceremony to begin construction on the Brickell Heights condo project that is to feature a pair of condo towers – 46 and 49 stories, respectively – with a combined 696 units on a site on the west side of the 800 block of South Miami Avenue in the Brickell Avenue Area, according to a spokesperson for the company.

An hour later on this same day, Related is hosting another groundbreaking ceremony for a new condo tower with 53 floors and 368 units called the Paraiso Bay on the north side of the 600 block of Northeast 31st Street in the Edgewater neighborhood.

The Paraiso Bay tower is the first of at least four high-rises with nearly 1,400 units proposed for the Paraiso community slated to be developed between Northeast 31st and 32nd streets stretching from Biscayne Bay west to Northeast Fourth Avenue in the Biscayne Boulevard Corridor of Greater Downtown Miami.

An hour after the second Thursday groundbreaking occurs, Related will formally initiate presales for the proposed 44-story, 388-unit Paraiso Bayviews project to be located just west of the Paraiso Bay condo tower on the north side of the 500 block of Northeast 31st Street .

All told, Related plans on Thursday to begin construction on a total of 148 floors of new condo towers with a combined 1,064 units. The company is targeting a third quarter of 2016 completion.

Construction of the planned Paraiso Bayviews, the project launching presales on Thursday, is scheduled to begin in early 2015, according to a Related spokesperson.

To date, Related has announced plans to develop – solely or with partners – at least 34 new condo towers with nearly 8,400 units east of I-95 in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, according to the preconstruction condo projects website CraneSpotters.com.

(For disclosure purposes, my firm operates the website.)

Related accounts for about 24 percent of the nearly 34,800 units announced in South Florida as of Monday.

During the last South Florida condo boom, Related developed 24 condo towers with nearly 9,150 units in South Florida’s seven largest costal markets, where 49,000 units were developed, according to an analysis by CondoVultures.com using county records in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach.

(For disclosure purposes, my firm operates the website.)

The unanswered question going forward is whether the South Florida preconstruction condo market has enough preconstruction buyers willing to make the necessary 50 percent deposit to acquire all of new units Related has announced to date east of I-95 in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.

Peter Zalewski is real estate columnist for The Real Deal who founded Condo Vultures LLC, a consultancy and publishing company, as well as Condo Vultures Realty LLC and CVR Realty brokerages and the Condo Ratings Agency, an analytics firm. The Condo Ratings Agency operates CraneSpotters.com, a preconstruction condo projects website, in conjunction with the Miami Association of Realtors.