Trending
Rishi Kapoor investors win approval for enlarged condo project in Fort Lauderdale
Alex Kleyner and Diana Ulis paid $30M for the waterfront development site from the seller who was under contract with troubled developer
Former Location Ventures investors Alex Kleyner and Diana Ulis won site plan approval for a condo development on a waterfront site in Fort Lauderdale. The Miami Beach couple acquired the 1.5-acre property for $30 million last year from the seller who was previously under contract with Rishi Kapoor, the embattled former CEO of Location Ventures.
The Fort Lauderdale City Commission on Tuesday approved an amended site plan for a 13-story, 83-unit condominium on Bayshore Drive, on the west side of city’s barrier island along the Intracoastal Waterway.
The amended site plan added two stories, 18 units, and 27 parking spaces to the original 11-story, 65-unit design of the condo development.
In September 2022, the city commission approved the original 11-story site plan submitted by Location Ventures, a Coral Gables-based firm that Kapoor led until he resigned as CEO last summer. He also quit the top job at Urbin, another Coral Gables-based firm he founded.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil lawsuit in Miami federal court last month alleging that Kapoor and Location Ventures defrauded more than 50 investors who contributed $93 million to the company’s real estate projects.
A forensic audit commissioned by the SEC shows that Kapoor misappropriated investor funds, buyer deposits, and loan proceeds, in part by paying himself $4.3 million he wasn’t entitled to.
In July, Ulis and Kleyner sued in Miami-Dade Circuit Court alleging that Kapoor owes them an unpaid debt of $25 million for investing in his company and real estate projects.
Their suit claims Kapoor defaulted on a deal to allow Ulis and Kleyner to recover $25 million in return for their investment in Location Ventures and two residential projects in Fort Lauderdale and Coral Gables.
The city code allowed an entity led by Ulis and Kleyner to add two stories to the condos planned at 551 Bayshore Drive because the building’s height would remain under 144 feet, and the size of the building’s floor plates would remain under 16,000 square feet, said Christopher Cooper, director of Fort Lauderdale’s department of development services.
“If you go to the maximum floor plate, you create that bulkier, heavier tower, so you have less light on the street, your view corridors are more interrupted, things of that nature,” Cooper said during the commission meeting Tuesday.