Sergio Pino

Miami developer Sergio Pino’s Century Homebuilders paid a $460,000 settlement to conclude a six-year, federal wetlands protection case, Daily Business Review reported.

The federal government gave Century, where Pino is president and chief executive, a permit for the Islands of Doral development in West Miami-Dade County in 2003, with one caveat. [more]

A rendering of Lancaster Plaza

A 0.8-acre lot at 250 Minorca Avenue in Coral Gables has been exchanged by developer Sergio Pino and partner Juan Carlos Mendez to release a $4.39 million mortgage on the property, the South Florida Business Journal reported. Pino and Mendez had previously planned to develop an 11-story commercial project on the site. Pino and Mendez’ company, Century Lancaster Plaza, transferred the lot to a company controlled by developer Armando Codina, which purchased the mortgage on the site from Mercantil Commercebank in March. The planned project was called Lancaster Plaza. [SFBJ]

Armando Codina

The site of a planned commercial development in Coral Gables has been acquired by an affiliate of developer Armando Codina, the South Florida Business Journal reported. Century Lancaster Plaza to C/Lancaster now controls the loan on the 0.8 acre lot at 250 Minorca Avenue, which had been planned as a commercial complex by Sergio Pino and partner Juan Carlos Mendez. “I can only tell you that this is all good and when built, it will be one of the most beautiful projects in the Gables,” Pino said in an email. [SFBJ]

An affiliate of Lennar has received a note on a group of lots in the Century Grand development in Doral from companies controlled by Sergio Pino, the CEO of Century Homebuilders. The debt on the site had been purchased by Flordade, an affiliate of Century Homebuilders, in 2011 from Wells Fargo. Two years earlier, Wells Fargo foreclosed on the more than 152 acres of the site. Lennar reportedly received a 50 percent discount on the note. [SFBJ]

Sergio Pino and U.S. Century Bank headquartersMiami-based U.S Century Bank received a $50.2 million federal bailout under the TARP program, but according to a ProPublica investigation the bank was hardly deserving of the funds. In fact, it mostly served as an ATM for the group of commercial real estate developers, including Sergio Pino, who founded U.S. Century in 2002.

For 15 consecutive quarters between 2005 and 2008, the bank ranked among the top 2 percent of all U.S. commercial lenders in the portion of its loans that went to directors or officers of the bank. Many of those insiders were commercial real estate developers who used the bank’s money to fund their risky projects. [more]

The $4.4 million foreclosure lawsuit aimed at the Coral Gables commercial project Lancaster Plaza named major homebuilder Sergio Pino as a guarantor. According to Miami-Dade County Circuit Court records, Coral Gables-based Mercantil Commercebank filed the suit against Century Lancaster Plaza as well as against Pino, who is a director at U.S. Century Bank, and Juan Carlos Menendez. Mercantil granted a $2.2 million mortgage to Century Lancaster Plaza in 2005, when the group bought the site for $7.5 million. A year later, the mortgage was increased by $26.6 million through a construction advance. [SFBJ]

If location is the key to real estate success, Sergio Pino knows that
flexibility is helpful in tough times. How else to explain how one of
South Florida’s most prominent developers, has gone from touting luxury
condominium apartments to renting flea market stalls?
The head of Century Homebuilders, which bills itself as the largest
Hispanic homebuilding company in the country, is now running Century
Marketplace, a west Miami flea market. The collection of market stalls,
once called the Flagler Flea Market, was evicted from its former home
in the parking lot of the Flagler Dog Track. It was on the verge of
folding when Pino stepped in and offered it space on land where he had
once planned to build a mixed-use condo-retail development. The current market makes that plan unfeasible for the time being, and
that inspired Pino’s daughter Jackie to seek a zoning variance,
encourage the market to relocate and take charge of renting the stalls.
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