Ram Realty pays $13M for dev sites in south Miami-Dade

Ram Realty Advisors is in line to add more residential units and retail to its mixed-use south Miami-Dade County project north of Zoo Miami.

Ram Realty bought 17.8 acres surrounding the Walmart Supercenter that is under construction for $13.2 million, according to records. The University of Miami sold the two properties to two Ram Realty affiliates. The sites are part of a much larger project under development.

In the bigger of the two latest deals, Ram Realty bought a 12.4-acre property just south of Walmart for $10.5 million. The land could be developed with 300 or more residential units, according to an assignment of development rights record from UM to Ram Realty. The document does not specify whether these will be condominiums or apartments.

Ram Realty also paid nearly $2.7 million for the 5.4-acre tract at 15301 Southwest 127th Avenue and just north of the Walmart. The property could be developed with 108,000 square feet of space, with restaurant and liquor store uses allowed, according to the development rights assignment for the tract.

Ram Realty scored a $7 million loan for the residential tract and a $1.3 million for the retail one, both from PNC Bank, records show.

The Palm Beach Gardens-based developer, led by Casey Cummings, declined to comment on the deal and its plans for the sites.

Parts of Ram Realty’s larger, over 80-acre project have already been completed, and some of the properties have been sold. In December, Atlanta-based Cortland bought the 408-unit Mareas at Botanica apartment complex, renaming it Cortland South Kendall, and an adjacent multifamily development lot for a combined $174.3 million.

Development of the expansive mixed-use community is ongoing, after being mired in litigation, with environmentalists having claimed that construction would raze part of the biggest pine rockland rare habitat outside of Everglades National Park.

After UM sold the majority of the property to Ram Realty in 2014, four environmental groups sued in federal court the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies that signed off on the developer’s allegedly incomplete conservation plan. Ram Realty argued at the time that it had spent years to come up with a development plan that would conserve the habitat, and government authorities also said UM had failed to maintain the tract.

Although the suit initially scored a win with a judge ordering a halt of the land clearing, the decision eventually was lifted and litigation settled confidentially in 2018.