Miami Worldcenter developers sell another piece of their pie

Long Island-based developer scored $23M loan from BNY Mellon

Rendering of Miami Worldcenter and Kevin Lalezarian
Rendering of Miami Worldcenter and Kevin Lalezarian

Miami Worldcenter developers Nitin Motwani and Art Falcone sold off another chunk of land at their mixed-use development in downtown Miami.

Property records show Miami Worldcenter Associates affiliate MWC Block E LLC sold the 2.5-acre parking lot at Northwest Eighth Street between North Miami and Northeast First avenues to Miami World Towers LLC for $43 million.

BNY Mellon provided the buyer, Lalezarian Properties, a $23 million loan to finance the deal.

Records show that Lalezarian Properties can build up to 2,600 residential units with up to 3 million square feet of floor area density on the site.

Based in Long Island, New York, Lalezarian is a family-owned property managment and development firm that leases both residential and commercial buildings, primarily in Manhattan.

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In Miami, Lalezarian owns the downtown Miami property at 200 South Miami Avenue, which is leased to Fedex. The company paid $37.25 million for the property in 2017.

Miami Worldcenter Associates has been selling sites within the 27-acre, $4 billion project to other developers. In April, the firm sold a piece to Zom Living and Moinian Group for $19.5 million for a 434-unit apartment tower near the Lalezarian property. Zom also scored a $119 million construction loan for the 43-story building.

CitizenM recently paid $10.75 million for a 15,000-square-foot development site at Worldcenter to build a 12-story, 348-room hotel.

Other components of Miami Worldcenter include high-street retail, a 1,700-room convention center hotel from MDM Development Group and an office tower built by Hines with up to 500,000 square feet of office space. Chicago-based Fifield is also proposing a 47-story, 738,000-square-foot building with about 15,000 square feet of retail space on the northeast corner of Northeast 10th Street and Northeast First Avenue as part of the project.