Stuart Miller’s Lennar Corp. and Armando Codina and Jim Carr’s CC Homes have closed on the purchase of the White Course in Doral, paying a total of about $96 million to acquire the golf course with plans for redevelopment.
The two developers were the winning bidders in the sale of the 130-acre property, which marks one of the most expensive land deals in Miami-Dade history. The seller is GWC Miami Property LLC, an affiliate of GIC, the sovereign fund of the government of Singapore. GIC acquired the property through bankruptcy actions.
County records show White Course Lennar LLC, CC Homes at Doral and CC-WCD TIC purchased the three parcels for $27.5 million, $27.6 million and $40.9 million, respectively. Lennar and Codina will split the property 50/50. On Codina’s portion, he and his business partner Jim Carr will develop about 390 single-family homes and 90 townhomes.
The deal, first reported by The Real Deal in January, was estimated to be in the $100 million range. At that price point, it compares to such other top-dollar Miami-Dade land transactions as the 2014 sale of the 1.25-acre Epic 2 in downtown Miami for $125 million; Lennar’s purchase of 143 acres in Miami Lakes which closed in January for $74.4 million; and 700 Brickell, which Swire bought in 2013 for $65 million.
Robert Given, CBRE’s vice chairman of investment sales, marketed the White Course, located in the northeast quadrant of Northwest 41st Street and Northwest 87th Avenue. The golf course is contiguous to the Trump National Doral Resort and Codina’s 120-acre Downtown Doral mixed-use project.
The developers have submitted plans to the city of Doral for 2,209 residential units, 30,000 square feet of retail space and 150,000 square feet of office space, according to a spokesperson for Codina. As planned, 7 acres will be set aside for civic use to be determined by the city, as well as a school for grades 6-12 that will complement the K-5 charter school at Downtown Doral.
Codina and Lennar beat out developer and presidential hopeful Donald Trump, Shoma Group’s Masoud Shojaee and others in the process. Bids were due on July 15, 2014.
The property’s zoning parameters were set forth in a master development agreement between the property’s predecessor owner, MSR Resort Hotel, in 2012. The agreement is in place for 20 years, and development must begin within 10 years, according to the CBRE offering. The agreement was part of a court settlement between the former owner and the city.
Doral is undergoing significant redevelopment. In addition to Downtown Doral, which opened its first components in the fall, other large, mixed-use projects include Shoma and Related Group’s CityPlace Doral, as well as Sergio Pino’s Midtown Doral.
Ina Cordle contributed reporting.