Here’s what Mast Capital plans for La Costa’s evacuated, oceanfront Miami Beach site

Developer Mast Capital wants to build a 100-unit luxury tower on the site of an oceanfront condo building that was ordered evacuated by the city of Miami Beach, The Real Deal has learned.

An affiliate of Mast Capital purchased nearly 90 percent of the condos at La Costa at 5333 Collins Avenue for more than $100 million beginning in May, according to property records and information from a company spokesperson. Only 16 units are occupied, records filed with the city show.

Developers are expected to increasingly target bulk buyouts of older buildings in need of costly repairs, experts say. And unit owners will be more likely to sell in the wake of the deadly Surfside collapse. As of Friday, 97 are confirmed dead from the tragic event.

Coconut Grove-based Mast Capital, led by Camilo Miguel Jr., proposes replacing La Costa with a 19-story, nearly 318,000-square-foot building.

The oceanfront La Costa building, a 15-story building with about 120 units, received notice this week to evacuate by Aug. 16. The beachfront property, developed in 1964, did not complete its 50-year recertification, a requirement in Miami-Dade County. The building required concrete restoration on the framing of the tower and parking garage/pool deck structure, according to a report from a structural engineer dated July 8.

One report by engineering firm Thornton Tomasetti, dated July 10, found that parts of the recreational deck next to the building, with underneath parking, are “at risk of collapse and shall not be used any further.”

Since the collapse of the Champlain Towers South in Surfside in June, cities throughout South Florida have been reviewing older buildings, especially those that have not completed their recertifications.

Mast Capital will go before the Miami Beach Design Review Board to seek approval to demolish the existing building and replace it with the as-yet-unnamed project designed by Rem Koolhaas’ OMA along with O’Donnell Dannwolf & Partners Architects.

The new project is designed to look like a series of slender towers angled toward the ocean.

The development would have a pool deck and a garage with 183 parking spaces and two loading spaces. Mast Capital said it is not seeking variances and would be building a much less dense project than what zoning allows.

Gustafson Porter + Bowman, together with Architectural Alliance Landscape are handling the landscaping.

Miami Beach recently declared another building, Devon Apartments, at 6881 Indian Creek Drive, unsafe and required residents to evacuate within a week, TRD reported earlier this week. In that case, the owner was already planning to tear down the 1939 building and replace it with townhouses.

Both followed the immediate evacuation of Crestview Towers, a condo complex in North Miami Beach, which was deemed unsafe about a week after the Surfside collapse.