Omega scores $100M construction loan for North Miami apartments

Omega Real Estate Management scored a $100 million construction loan for the multifamily portion of its planned mixed-use The Gardens District project in North Miami.

The nine-story apartment building, called The Gardens Residence, will have 358 units and 1,100 square feet of ground-floor retail at 1155 Northeast 126th Street, according to a news release from Berkadia, which secured the loan.

Charles Foschini and Christopher Apone, of Berkadia’s Miami office, represented Omega. New York-based Churchill Real Estate is the lender, with the firm’s Jeff Rosenfeld and Sean Robertson handling the loan.

It’s a two-year, floating-rate financing, with two one-year extension options and interest only for the full term, including extensions, the release says. In addition, the North Miami Community Redevelopment Agency provided $15 million in project subsidies.

The apartment building will offer studios, as well as one- to three-bedroom apartments, averaging 511 square feet to 1,270 square feet. The project will have a workforce housing portion, as 10 percent of the units will be for households earning 80 percent or less of the area’s median income.

The Gardens Residence will include a 528-space garage, with unit and common area amenities such as stainless steel appliances and floor-to-ceiling windows, a rooftop pool, a café with outdoor terrace seating and a public sculpture, according to the release.

Construction is set to start next week and is expected to be completed in the late spring of 2024, the release says.

The follow-up phases of the larger mixed-use district will consist of a 28,000-square-foot The Gardens Corporate office building; an 8,000-square-foot The Creative Center office building; and a 12,000-square-foot The Hall, with a gourmet grocery store and four restaurants. They will all be built at 1075, 1111 and 1125 Northeast 125th Street, according to the release.

Behar Font & Partners is the architect.

Omega Real Estate, led by CEO Sebastien Scemla, is largely focusing on downtown North Miami, according to the company’s website.

The firm assembled the 7-acre property for The Gardens District in several deals, paying $5.8 million for the 4-acre multifamily development site in 2018, according to Scemla and property records. Omega, through affiliates, bought the remainder of the property for the offices and The Hall for almost $11 million, combined, in several deals this year and last year, records show.

Prior to forming Omega in 2018, Scemla was involved in real estate in Miami’s hot Wynwood and Little Haiti neighborhoods and also had assembled properties in the Miami Design District that he later sold to Craig Robins’ Dacra, according to Omega’s website.

The Gardens District is the latest planned project in an area of North Miami that has caught investors’ eyes and is poised for quick redevelopment. The development is planned for a few blocks west from a proposed Brightline commuter train stop.

Farther west, Strategic Properties and project partners Francis Jacob and Jacob Nae want to build a roughly 12-story, 220-unit apartment project on the site of the Church of God Evangelical at 12830 Northeast Sixth Avenue and the next-door house at 575 Northeast 127th Street.

Even farther west, Marcelo Tenenbaum and Jorge Savloff’s Blue Road plan a 20-story, 139-unit multifamily project along Northwest Seventh Avenue.

One of the biggest North Miami projects is Turnberry Development and LeFrak’s 184-acre, $4 billion SoLé Mia that includes a Costco, Crystal Lagoon and several apartment towers. Turnberry, led by Jackie Soffer, and LeFrak, are partnering with Carlos Rosso on the next part of SoLé Miami, the 32-story One Park Tower condo building.