Student housing developer buys site near University of Miami

Shoma, which sold the assemblage, purchased an adjacent lot to build an office building

1515 San Remo Avenue and J. Wesley Rogers
1515 San Remo Avenue and J. Wesley Rogers

Masoud Shojaee’s Shoma Group just sold a site in Coral Gables to Landmark Properties, a student housing developer, for $30 million.

Shoma sold the site at 1515 San Remo Avenue and 1500 Venera Avenue to Standard at Coral Gables LLC, an affiliate of Athens, Georgia-based Landmark, according to property records.

Shoma paid a combined $15.2 million to buy out the 47 condo unit owners of the Villa San Remo building in 2017 and $5.65 million for the Venera Avenue property in 2013. The developer planned to build a $36 million residential and retail project on the assemblage, which is within walking distance of the Shops at Sunset Place and about a mile away from the University of Miami.

Landmark will likely build off-campus housing on the property. The firm owns eight student housing complexes in Florida, either completed or under construction, including the Standard at Gainesville, a 430-unit, 1,200-bed luxury apartment complex near the University of Florida. Landmark could not immediately be reached for comment.

Rafael Fermoselle of Eleven Trust Real Estate and Marcus Christensen of Thornbury Capital brokered the deal.

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Shoma proposed building 172 apartments, 33,000 square feet of retail space, 378 parking spaces, a community kitchen, fitness center and a rooftop pool on the site.

On the day it sold the Gables assemblage, Shoma’s MAS San Remo Coral Gables LLC paid $2.55 million for the parking lot at 1537 San Remo Avenue. It plans to build a five-story office building on that site, which the Coral Gables Board of Architects approved plans for in October.

The board also approved the nine-story, mixed-use residential and commercial development planned for 1515 San Remo Avenue and 1500 Venera Avenue, city documents show. The project was designed by Bermello Ajamil & Partners.

In August, South Miami voters approved a change to the commission’s unanimous vote requirement for land use and development regulations in the city’s downtown to a four-fifths majority – which means that a lone commissioner would no longer be able to kill commercial, industrial and mixed-use projects near the South Miami Metrorail Station. The owners of the Shops at Sunset Place, Federal Realty Investment Trust, Comras Company and Grass River Property, originally proposed knocking down parts of the mall and adding two apartment buildings with 400 units and a 200-room hotel and retail on the ground floor connecting both.