South Beach parking lot ripe for development sells for $20M

Sometimes, a long-term real estate hold is well worth the payoff.

The property owners of Story Nightclub in South Beach sold an adjacent parking lot for $20 million — more than $19 million above their purchase price 36 years ago.

In 1986, an entity managed by Lawrence, Patricia and Patrick Kaine of Miami, paid $350,000 for a quartet of empty parcels at 125, 137, 141 and 151 Collins Avenue in Miami Beach and converted them into a parking lot, records show.

Recently, the Kaines sold the 26,000-square-foot site to an entity managed by Miami-based attorney Brenden D. Soucy. Soucy and the Kaines did not respond to requests for comment. The land sale equates to $769 a square foot.

In September, the Kaines’ entity submitted a notice with the Miami Beach Historic Preservation Board saying that it was planning to file an application for a 45,500-square-foot multifamily residential building, city records show. However, no application is pending because nothing was ever submitted to the city, Miami Beach Historic Preservation & Architecture Officer Deborah Tackett said in an email.

The Kaines also own the two-story building at 136 Collins Avenue that is home to popular nightlife venue Story, records show. The nightclub’s operating and management entity is owned by Fontainebleau Development’s Jeffrey Soffer and Groot Hospitality’s David Grutman.

Miami Beach’s South of Fifth neighborhood has had a handful of high-ticket commercial trades this year. Last month, Azora Exan, a joint venture between Madrid-based and Miami-based real estate investment firms, paid $37 million for a five-story building fully leased to WeWork at 429 Lenox Avenue.

In April, South Miami-based Cambridge Lansdowne bought the Urbanica Meridian Hotel at 418-420 Meridian Avenue for $30.5 million. The same month, Robert Rivani’s Black Lion Investment Group nabbed a 12,000-square-foot restaurant building at 200 South Pointe Drive for $11.5 million.