PMG closes on 400 Biscayne, nabs financing for apartment tower

Property Markets Group has closed on the site at 400 Biscayne Boulevard where it intends to build a massive two-phase, mixed-use development, as the company continues to move forward with major new construction projects in South Florida.

The New York developer paid $55 million for the 1.15-acre site and financed the deal with a $35 million loan from Greybrook Realty Partners, its partner on the development. PMG, led by Kevin Maloney and Ryan Shear, went under contract to buy the site from First United Methodist Church last summer.

The first phase will include a 690-unit, roughly 500-foot apartment tower with about 10,000 square feet of commercial, retail and restaurant space and will be part of the developer’s X Social Communities apartment portfolio, according to a press release.

The 400 Biscayne site allows for 1.8 million square feet of development, about 1,150 residential units and unlimited height, pending FAA approval, under its T6-8O zoning. It has 305 feet of frontage along the boulevard.

Construction will likely begin in the third quarter of this year with an estimated completed date of the summer of 2020. PMG is working on securing about $150 million in construction financing, Shear said.

That stretch of Biscayne Boulevard has several projects in the planning or construction phases, including the Zaha Hadid-designed One Thousand Museum and the recently completed Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science. In 2016, Kawa Capital Management bought into the Holiday Inn site nearby at 340 Biscayne Boulevard, which was previously approved for a mixed-use tower.

HFF’s Jaret Turkell and Maurice Habif represented the church and Shear, Evan Schapiro, Matt Ellish and Yechiel Ciment represented PMG.

As part of the deal, the developer will build First United Methodist a new, 20,000-square-foot church on the site with a separate entrance.

Amenities under PMG’s new apartment line typically include co-working spaces, fitness studios, communal kitchens, package lockers, bike storage and other millennial-oriented features, like keyless entry. In South Florida, previously announced projects under that brand include X Las Olas, which broke ground this week, and X Miami, previously known as Vice, at 300 Biscayne Boulevard. X Miami is expected to open this summer with rents starting at $1,600 a month.

The developer has held off on announcing plans for a separate condo development that will be built on the same property as X Miami amid the market slowdown. “We’ll launch when it feels appropriate,” Shear said.