In a span of weeks, a second Wynwood development site is hitting the market with an asking price above $30 million.
Miami-based real estate investor Joseph Cohen is listing the 1-acre assemblage with an asking price of $35 million, according to Juan Andres Nava and Andy Charry with Metro1 Commercial, the brokers marketing the site.
Across Miami, development sites are selling at record prices, with nearly $808 million in sales last year.
Cohen, owner of the nearby Wynwood Block retail building, acquired the assemblage’s three properties at 2100 Northwest North Miami Court, 2101 Northwest First Avenue and 2127 Northwest First Avenue for a combined $3.2 million between 2012 and 2014, records show.
With large development sites in Wynwood virtually gone, Cohen is following in the footsteps of New York-based Thor Equities, led by Chairman Joe Sitt. About three weeks ago, Thor placed a 0.7-acre development site on the market with an asking price of $32 million. The five-parcel assemblage at Northwest 28th Street and Northwest Second Avenue is primed for a mixed-use project.
“Joseph’s property is the largest parcel available in [Wynwood],” Nava said. “Anything else that’s an acre or more has traded. Given the scarcity of land, at this moment it presents an opportunity for the influx of developers coming from all over the world into Wynwood.”
Cohen’s assemblage has three converted warehouses totaling about 54,000 square feet that can be redeveloped into a five-story mixed-use project with about 150 residential or hotel units. However, a 2020 amendment to Wynwood’s zoning code allows bonuses for three additional stories and increased density of either 244 apartments or 488 hotel rooms, Nara said. The potential for a bigger development factored into the asking price, he added.
“Very few properties have closed since that zoning [change was adopted],” Nara said. “We have an opportunity to capture that value, and that is how we arrived at that price.”
To get the bonus height and density, developers have to abide by certain requirements. Among them, building units of 600 square feet or less, and paying $20,000 per additional unit into a neighborhood trust fund, Nara said.
The evolution of the Wynwood buyer pool also factored into the asking price, Charry said. “Before, you had a specific group of developers and investors who were willing and able to purchase these types of properties,” he said. “From an asset class standpoint, you not only have multifamily, you also have offices and hotels. That creates a little bigger buyer pool.”
Charry noted Cohen’s assemblage is surrounded by new projects that are under construction or in the pipeline such as Quadram Global’s Arlo mixed-use hotel, Clearline Real Estate’s mixed-use apartment project and Fisher Brothers’ proposed apartment building on the site of the former Miami Rescue Mission headquarters.
In the most recent of those deals, Clearline paid $19.1 million for its 1.4-acre development site in Wynwood in April.