JQ buys piece of Triptych project in Midtown Miami, seeks $120M in financing

The JQ Group of Companies has purchased a stake in HES Group’s Triptych mixed-use project in Midtown Miami, and the two are now seeking $120 million in construction financing.

Jesus Quintero, JQ’s CEO, told The Real Deal that his firm paid “in excess of $10 million” to buy both a piece of HES’s development site at at 3601 North Miami Avenue, as well as a stake in the project itself.

As part of the partnership, JQ will handle everything related to the actual construction of Triptych, a planned 20-story tower that would house 38,000 square feet of retail, 41,000 square feet of offices, 300 parking spaces and a 252-room hotel under Hilton Worldwide’s Curio Collection if built.

The plans have downsized slightly from when Triptych was first announced. Its overall square footage has shrunken from 530,000 square feet to 475,000 square feet, most of which was shaved off the project’s originally proposed 70,000 square feet of office space and 296 hotel rooms.

Now that the partnership is a done deal, Quintero said, the developers are hoping to piece together $120 million in construction financing from a variety of sources: private equity, a mezzanine loan, EB-5 investors and a traditional loan from a financial institution. Construction would begin as soon as both the financing and EB-5 credits are secured.

If all goes according to plan, the firms hope to open Triptych by the first quarter of 2018. The project scored city planning and zoning board approvals in October 2015.

Besides Triptych, hotel developer HES has four other projects in South Florida: Hotel Indigo in Brickell, the Aloft Coral Gables, the Aloft West Palm Beach and another yet-to-be-branded hotel in West Palm Beach. Its most recent completed project here was the Aloft Miami-Brickell Hotel, which it partnered with the Sunview Companies to build and held its grand opening in 2013.

JQ is also involved in a handful of high-profile South Florida developments, overseeing the construction of Newgard Development Group’s recently completed Centro condo tower in downtown Miami, as well as the mixed-use Midtown Doral project that’s under development.