Dev Motwani closes on Dania Beach site, plans $70M multifamily project

Dev Motwani is heading south to Dania Beach.

The Fort Lauderdale investor and developer closed on a site approved for an eight-story rental building with ground floor retail and a slate of amenities, Motwani told The Real Deal. He paid $5 million in cash for the 2.2-acre property at 4 North Federal Highway on Friday, and plans to build a $70 million, 300-unit building on the corner of Dania Beach Boulevard and Federal Highway. 

Property records show CTKO Dania Venture LLC, an entity controlled by attorney Ken Wurtenberger and Ken Barber, is the seller. The deal has not yet cleared records.

Motwani said he worked with Wurtenberger to get approvals in December, and is now working on securing about $40 million in construction financing, as well as building permits, for the project. Wurtenberger could not immediately be reached for comment.

“[Dania] is one of those communities that’s been overlooked by developers, but that’s all changing,” Motwani said, citing the nearby airport and port as demand drivers for Class A rental product in Dania. More than $1 billion of new development is in the works in Hollywood and Dania, including Kimco Realty Corp.’s $1 billion Dania Pointe project and the redevelopment of the old Jai Alai center into the Casino at Dania Beach. Dania Pointe will have 1,000 residential units, 900,000 square feet of retail space, 500,000 square feet of office space, 300 hotel rooms and a large entertainment center.

Property records show CTKO Dania Venture paid a combined $2.1 million for the assemblage in 2013.

Dave Duckworth of Avison Young brokered the deal between CTKO and Motwani’s 4 N Federal Dania LLC. “It was a complicated entitlement process because we had to go through not just site plan approval, but also a rezoning. We had to vacate a street with the city, work with FPL to do the underground utilities,” Motwani said. He’s in talks with equity partners, as well as development partners.

Rents will start at more $2 a foot for apartments sized at about 850 square feet. At $2 per square foot, the average unit would cost $1,700 a month. “I have a lot of friends getting priced out of Flagler Village, so they either have to move north out of Fort Lauderdale or west into Plantation,” Motwani said. “This gives them the ability to live in a Class A building on their own.”

AHS Development Group is completing a new apartment project nearby called The Place at Dania Beach, at 180 East Dania Beach Boulevard, this summer. Motwani said apartments there will be similarly priced, but that his project is on the higher end with more amenities.

Amenities will include indoor and outdoor gyms, a dog park, co-working space, yoga and spinning rooms, an elevated outdoor pool deck, and 13,000 square feet of neighborhood retail space on the ground floor.

The developer expects to break ground once he secures construction financing.