Crunch Fitness Founder Doug Levine Plans Little Haiti Project

Crunch Fitness founder Douglas Levine is embarking on his latest adaptive reuse project in Miami.

Levine wants to convert roughly 50,000 square feet of warehouses at 400 Northeast 67th Street, and an adjacent lot, into retail and offices with food and beverage uses, he told The Real Deal. He bought the Little Haiti properties spanning 3.3 acres for $11 million from the tenant, indoor hydroponic sprouts farm Fullei Fresh, according to records.

Fullei Fresh is vacating the site by May, Levine said.

Levine’s plan is in the early stages, but the project marks his continued wager on retrofitting industrial real estate into retail and offices in Miami’s booming neighborhoods. In Wynwood, his completed projects include Atrium @Trackside and MAD @Trackside in former industrial buildings on the northwest corner of Northeast 24th Street and the Florida East Coast Railway tracks.

Some of his projects have been in Allapattah, where he opened Allapattah Market at 728 Northwest 29th Street. He also owns property in Little River.

In his other Little Haiti deals, Levine paid $17.8 million for a pair of retail buildings at 8200 Northeast Second Avenue and 201 Northeast 82nd Street last year. The deal came on the heels of his debut in Fort Lauderdale, where he bought an office building at 1100 West McNab Road for $15 million.

After selling Crunch Fitness in 2001, Levine moved from New York to Miami Beach and initially started baby products firm Fridababy. A few years later, he bought his first building in Wynwood, according to his Big Move Properties real estate firm’s website.

Little Haiti, once the heart of Miami-Dade County’s Haitian community, has been rapidly gentrifying in recent years, as investors snapped up properties for redevelopment. Plaza Equity Partners, Lune Rouge and the project’s investors, including Dragon Global’s Bob Zangrillo, plan the 18-acre Magic City Innovation District. Ground-up development has not started since the city approved the project in 2019, though several warehouses have been rehabilitated, and officials are reviewing construction permit applications, according to the Miami Herald.