Little Havana skyline

Judges are siding with landlords as Little Havana residents withhold rent in protest of poor living conditions, the Miami Herald reported. Despite holes in the walls, mold, a lack of hot water and broken stoves, tenants are being ordered to pay up or get out by Miami courts.

Under Florida law renters must either pay their landlord or a court-maintained escrow fund no matter how bad the living conditions. [more]

Marlins Park

Residents near the new Marlins stadium are furious, the Miami Herald said, because of Little Havana’s new gameday parking plan that prohibits residents from parking on some streets during the 81 times a year Miami’s Major League Baseball team steps to the plate.

People who live on those blocks will have to find parking elsewhere to accommodate baseball fans coming to watch the game. [more]

The Latin Quarter Apartments

Lloyd Berger has been appointed the receiver of a 4,000-square-foot property at 1730 SW 7th Street in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood, according to Berger Commercial Realty’s Berger Special Assets division. The Latin Quarter Apartmetns property, which was built in 1950, has a total of 11 units across two buildings. “Our aim is to restore this property’s value through cost-efficient management and by maintaining its occupancy level,” Berger said. — Alexander Britell

After years of sluggish sales, Miami developer Urban All Development Group sold 65 remaining units in the San Lorenzo condominium at auction last weekend. One-bedrooms fetched a minimum of $80,000; two-bedrooms went for at least $141,750, according to Real Estate Disposition, which conducted the auction. As real estate consultancy Condo Vultures previously reported, the 10-story, 90-unit condo in the Little Havana section of Miami was completed in 2007, having sold 22 residential units for an average price of $224,000, or $329 per square foot, prior to the auction. All sales took place between August 2007 and February 2008, before stalling. The auction, with a minimum asking price of $50,500 per unit, or $63 per square foot, drew a crowd of 375 to the live auction at the Hyatt Regency Miami, in addition to those bidders who put in their offers online. All units sold in less than three hours. TRD

Beta Credit Management, the developer of the San Lorenzo condo in
Little Havana, will auction 62 units on April 10 — at a starting price
of $63 per square foot. Just three blocks from the site of the future
Florida Marlins stadium, the building’s units will have an average
asking price of $50,000. This is a steep reduction from typical closing
prices in the building, which have hovered around $220,000. Up until
now, 24 percent of the building’s units have closed. According to
research by Bal Harbour-based Condo Vultures, the average closing price
in 40 deals for more than 3,200 condos in Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and
Broward counties in the last year and a half has been $242 per square
foot. TRD

Colliers Abood Wood-Fay, along with North Miami-based AmeriBid, will auction off two commercial properties March 16 at the Marriott Marquis. The FDIC Insured Bank Foreclosure Auction will put two properties on the block: the 14,000-square-foot former ‘Art Temple’ at 7141 Indian Creek Drive in Miami Beach,and a vacant land parcel at 435 SW 12th Avenue, near Little Havana. The minimum bid is $900,000 for the Miami Beach property and $350,000 for the Miami property. Colliers announced it would combine operations with FirstService in January. Colliers is set to become Colliers International April 21. TRD

New Miami mayor Tomas Regalado has called out the proponents of the new Miami Marlins retractable-roof stadium, saying the project isn’t creating the local jobs its backers promised. He asked the Miami-Dade County’s inspector general to look at the hiring practices of Sunshine Coast Management and Cove Construction, claiming they had failed to hire locally for this part of the largely publicly funded project. Regalado said September payroll records for the subcontractors indicate only 73 of their 259 workers, only 28 percent, live in Miami-Dade County. The $565 million project is intended to revitalize the Little Havana neighborhood. [Miami Today]

Hundreds of construction workers and contractors staged a protest Tuesday outside the site of the new Florida Marlins stadium, which recently broke ground in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood, the Miami Herald reported. The stadium was once welcomed as a beacon of hope for the area’s small businesses and contractors who are already short on jobs, but protestors said the Marlins were not hiring enough local firms for the project. The team said they’re not only complying with the government’s requirements, but are also exceeding them in terms of local firms’ participation. The stadium is on budget and is slated to open in 2012 as planned, a Marlins representative said.
[more]

Miami commissioner Tomás Regalado, now the front-runner in the race to succeed Mayor Manny Diaz, thinks the city needs a break from rapid development. Regalado recently criticized the Mayor’s plans for parking garages at the new baseball stadium in Little Havana, and Miami 21, the overhaul of the city’s zoning code, though both passed. Critics say the candidate, a 13-year veteran of city politics, has little in the way of constructive plans, despite his critiques of major projects over the last eight years. [Miami Herald]

Business owners in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood are eagerly
awaiting the construction of the new Marlins baseball stadium later
this year. They hope the construction workers — 5,000 to 6,000 people
are expected to take part in the construction project — will expand
their customer base, which shrank after the demolition of the Orange
Bowl stadium last year. Thousands of construction workers came to the
area around the stadium July 8 to fill out job applications. The
stadium is slated to open in 2012, and business owners expect that to
bring even more business to the neighborhood. [more]