Italian Gianluca Vacchi Partners With Michael Stern

Italian entrepreneur Gianluca Vacchi is partnering with developer Michael Stern, taking his marketing chops and wellness expertise to work on a $4 billion pipeline of new real estate projects, starting in South Florida.

Vacchi, who has a combined 45 million followers on Instagram and TikTok, formed a joint venture through his GV Development Group and Stern’s JDS Development Group, the partners told The Real Deal.

Together they’re working on Mercedes-Benz Places Miami, the Dolce & Gabbana-branded 888 Brickell and the proposed 1250 West Avenue project in Miami Beach. All are planned condo developments. They’ll total about 1,150 condos.

Vacchi is part of the wealthy Vacchi family based in Italy. He sold his stake in their IMA Group, a manufacturing empire, in 2023. Reuters reported that year that the private equity firm BC Partners agreed to sell its stake in IMA to BDT & MSD Partners in a deal valuing the company at about 7 billion euros.

GV Development is the U.S. real estate arm of Vacchi’s Italian company, Cofiva Holding.

Vacchi started working with Stern about nine months ago, he said, but the two have known each other since Vacchi bought a home in Miami Beach in 2020. Developer Valerio Morabito sold his waterfront Sunset Islands mansion to Vacchi for $24.5 million.

Vacchi said he spends about three to four months a year in Miami.

He also partnered with Stern, Anatomy Fitness owner Chris Paciello and Rafi Gibly on Sunset Padel, an indoor padel members’ only club that recently opened in Miami Beach’s Sunset Harbour. Vacchi said padel is a “huge part of my life.”

Vacchi will lean into his social media, sales and marketing experience to sell the condo projects. Stern said they’ll be announcing additional developments in other markets as well.

“He really understands new media and how to cut through the noise on social media in a way most real estate people don’t,” Stern said. “That’s often the most effective way of marketing real estate.”

On social media, Vacchi’s posts, showcasing his lifestyle as he travels, works out, cold plunges and spends time with his family, receive tens of thousands of likes. Vacchi, who is also a DJ, is always on the move. He called himself a “Benjamin Button” of sorts who has worked all the time since he was a young adult.

“My style is not to have a style, in the sense that nothing is established. I want to surprise myself day after day,” he said. “I do all the things I should have done at 20 when I’m 50, but this is what I like of myself.”

Stern, who referred to Vacchi as a “tastemaker,” also referred to Vacchi’s reach, particularly in Latin America, and his experience with health, fitness and anti-aging that their projects will tap. They are 50-50 partners on the real estate developments they’re working on, Stern and Vacchi said.

“I’m very happy to spread my open secrets. One is the way I play with my body between heat and cold,” he said. Vacchi referred to a bicycle he created with infrared lights. “Cycling is one of the things that’s probably going to be in the amenities. Everyone knows that cold plunging is something that has huge benefits.”

Instead of opening a restaurant at one of their developments with healthy food, Vacchi said one idea could be to also have that restaurant operate only during intermittent fasting hours.

“Let’s see what I invent,” he said. “I’m not very conventional, and so I’ll try to do my best to give these buildings my unconventionality.”