Nadim Ashi is closing on the buyout of a waterfront West Palm Beach condo building, securing a prime development site across from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club.
The buyout of Harbor Towers, which sources say will total about $100 million, also marks a victory for Ashi over Steve Ross.
The two industry titans went head-to-head in a legal battle over control of the 2-acre, two-building, 61-unit complex at 3901 South Flagler Drive last year. With Ashi’s Fort Partners poised to take control of the majority of units, Ross sued in April, demanding an injunction to block termination of the condo.
Ashi’s attorney Glen Waldman described the legal maneuver as a standard block play, a natural byproduct of the intense competition for West Palm Beach’s limited waterfront sites.
“Every time you have big boys playing in the sandbox … they fight, and that’s what they do,” he said in an October interview. “They’re not scared to fight.”
The scrap seemed poised to get ugly in the fall, with Ashi’s lawyers alleging underhanded tactics and seeking to depose Ross and his executives. The parties ultimately reached a settlement in October, allowing Ashi to move forward with his condo termination at Harbor Towers.
“These owners were making so much money,” Waldman said of the payout for unit owners. “There are no losers here.”
Waldman declined to comment on the final closings for this story, but Douglas Elliman agent Jessica Julian confirmed the buyout is a boon for sellers. She would know –– she was among the unit owners to sell to Fort Partners. She also helped cut the deals between the developer and the rest of her neighbors, something that landed her in Related Ross’ lawsuit last year.
She declined to comment on the total sellout price, but said the average price per unit worked out to about $1.4 million.
“I told my neighbors, ‘Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,’” she said, describing early days courting Harbor Towers owners.
Julian described a first wave of eager sellers who “wanted to take the money and run,” followed by months of angst and hostility between neighbors and the two bidding developers.
“We were in a little bit of a war zone,” she said.
With the last units closing, Ashi now controls the contiguous waterfront sites at 3901 South Flagler Drive, 3906 Washington Road and 3907 South Flagler Drive. He paid $20 million for the other two properties in November, records show.
While Ashi won out at Harbor Towers, he lost to Steve Ross’ bid for the neighboring Southbridge condos at 3915 South Flagler Drive. The billionaire Related Ross chairman closed on a $25.4 million bulk buy of units in the building earlier this month. It marked a major payday for investor Joey Columbo who quietly bought up 43 percent of the units in the years prior, anticipating that a developer would come knocking.
Also this month, Gilbert Benhamou’s Immocorp Capital offered $202 million to buy out the 140-unit South Portofino Condominium, which is adjacent to Harbor Towers.
Julian said she’s getting a lot of calls from developers interested in buying aging buildings.
But she’s also starting to see hesitation from some developers concerned about prices and market saturation. If unit owners are interested in selling in this current wave of investment, she said, “They might want to be a bit more reasonable [with prices].”