Owner of Brightline operator offers to build new Miami-Dade courthouse

A group led by Florida East Coast Industries, the owner of the company that operates the Brightline passenger train service, made an unsolicited proposal to build a new civil courthouse for Miami-Dade County.

County commissioners acknowledged the unsolicited proposal at a meeting in January without saying who made the proposal or what it entails.

Tara Smith, director of the county’s Internal Services Department, told Miami Today on Jan. 30 that a group called New Flagler Courthouse Development Partners submitted the courthouse development proposal.

The group includes Florida East Coast Industries, the parent company of All Aboard Florida; a joint venture of Hunt Companies and Moss Construction Management called Hunt/Moss, and CGL, an affiliate off Hunt Companies.

Smith told Miami Today that the Internal Services Department will recommend to commissioners on Feb. 9 whether to consider the unsolicited proposal or to solicit competing proposals, or to do both, either sequentially or simultaneously.

The county’s new civil courthouse would be built on property next to the new Miami-Dade Children’s Courthouse at 155 Northwest Third Street in downtown Miami.

Developer Russell Galbut last year made an unsolicited proposal under which his firm Crescent Heights would build a new 35-story county courthouse at a cost of $300 million.

In exchange, Crescent Heights would lease the courthouse to the county for at least $18 million a year for 99 years and would redevelop the existing courthouse at 73 West Flagler Street, which was built in 1928. [Miami Today] – Mike Seemuth