No one knew Miami would become a magnet for out-of-state firms clamoring for Brickell offices when construction started on 830 Brickell in 2019. Yet, the 57-story, 640,000-square-foot spec project was timed perfectly.
Jonathan Goldstein, the billionaire Brit who leads London-based Cain, which partnered on the project with Vlad Doronin’s OKO Group, had an outsider’s perspective on the project.
“Sometimes it takes an eye that is not ingrained in the locality to see the potential,” Goldstein said. “Sometimes you have to be counter-cyclical. You can’t just follow the herd. I didn’t want to just build more condos.”
830 Brickell was completed in 2024 fully pre-leased, catching the pandemic-era demand boom. Beyond this tower, Cain has played a hand in reshaping South Florida’s skyline, partnering on many projects with OKO, including the luxury Una Residences in Brickell and Missoni Baia in Edgewater. Cain also is an investor in Doronin’s hospitality firm Aman Group, which is building a condo and hotel in Miami Beach, on the site of the historic Versailles building.
Cain’s backer, Eldridge Industries, is led by billionaire Todd Boehly, who — like Goldstein — is a Guggenheim Partners alumnus. Eldridge is renovating the Delano Miami Beach, which has been closed since 2020, with plans to reopen the hotel in time for the Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix in early May.
Cain, in partnership with Gaurav Bhushan’s London-based hospitality firm Ennismore, a joint venture with Accor, owns a minority stake in the Delano brand.
In Los Angeles, Cain is trying its hand at developing luxury condos and hotels with the 17.4-acre One Beverly Hills project, which last month landed a $4.3 billion financing to complete construction. It will include an Aman hotel.
Goldstein, who lives in London, recently sat down with The Real Deal for a 30-minute interview last week. Coming straight from a site visit at the nearby Delano, Goldstein revealed his next planned Miami project and shared his thoughts on which condo brands work –– and which don’t –– as well as why investment will come back to real estate and what’s next for the Miami market.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q. Why invest in the Delano as opposed to other Art Deco South Beach hotels?
A. We’ve been involved in the hotel for about 10 years. First, we invested in sbe Entertainment Group in 2016 as an equity partner and then ended up in control of the property from 2022 onwards. It’s an iconic piece of real estate; part of the fabric of Miami Beach.
Together with [French hospitality group] Paris Society, which is part of Accor, we’re bringing Italian restaurant Gigi Rigolatt and Japanese restaurant Mimi Kakushi, now in Dubai, to the Delano. The new environment we are creating at the Delano, we think will propel the brand back onto the global stage.
Q. Why build 830 Brickell on spec before Miami became a major US office market?
A. We came into Miami in 2016-17 in partnership with OKO Group, and we had a number of sites that ended up being under our ownership. I felt very strongly that Miami needed a Class A office building. A new, environmentally appropriate, great height of ceilings, great views, great light, great air. I felt that would be the right thing for the marketplace.
We did have an underpin from WeWork at the beginning of the transaction, but we always regarded that as an option. WeWork was either going to hit the stratosphere, or it was going to fail. Either way, we had confidence there would be other tenants that would want to take space, so we ended up doing a deal with WeWork to remove them from the building before we finish and replace them with Citadel and Santander.
Q. And then South Florida’s office market had an unexpected boom. And so you bought out WeWork from its pre-lease?
A. The amount of the growth was surprising to all of us, but not that there would be growth and appetite for that product. We always believed that would happen. Sometimes you have to be lucky as well as clever. And we clearly had a level of fortune with the pace of acceleration. But we always believed acceleration would come.
WeWork had leased at about $60 per square foot. We have achieved north of $100 a foot with the people who replaced them. Now the top rent in the building is well-north of $200 a foot, triple net.
Q. What’s the state of Miami’s office market now? Would you build another 830 Brickell?
A. One of the challenges in building office towers, which is why Swire decided not to build their office tower, is the length of time it takes to build. If you’re a company committing to that pre-lease, it’s a long journey to get to that endgame, and you don’t know how you as a company are going to feel in five, six, eight years when these buildings are complete.
The financing market is probably more challenging today than it was then. So without a commitment from a tenant, people are going to find it hard to complete and build new office product the way that we did it.
Q. Aside from elevated interest rates, what are the other market challenges?
A. It’s just the volatility we have seen in the world. We are all desperate for a period of being able to say, “God, it’s boring.” We’ve been through Covid, through Ukraine, through inflation. Then we think, “OK, we’re calming down.” And now of course we are back into another jolt of the global order. I’m not passing comment on the underlying issue. I’m just saying all of this volatility in the marketplace makes funders nervous.
Q. How are issues on the geopolitical stage, including higher oil prices since the Iran war started, affecting real estate more specifically?
A. It’s supply chains. You’ve got commodities coming from all around the world. If you can’t ship around the world, or it takes longer to sail around the world because your voyage is avoiding conflict areas, it’s really expensive. If you are freighting commodities around the world and the whole price has gone up, it’s more expensive to move things around.
People are hedged for a certain period. But they are not hedged forever.
Q. South Florida is experiencing another influx by wealthy individuals likely fleeing California’s proposed billionaire tax, as well as some movement with AI, with Palantir Technologies moving its headquarters here. But are we in for another boom?
A. It depends on how much supply exists across asset classes to absorb the demand. How much product is there for people to move down here?
Florida and Texas are seen as very attractive places in which to invest. They’ve got the fundamentals in the right place. That’s one of the major reasons we have seen the boom across Florida. That will continue.
New York is being challenged by Mayor Mamdani and his policies and where he wishes to take the state. In California, it’s different, they’ve got governor elections coming up and that may change the sense of direction even with the threatened billionaire tax. I think post the fires in L.A., and post the situation in San Francisco, let’s hope there’s a political will to soften some of the more radical policies of the last few years.
Q. If high-net-worth individuals flee California due to the billionaire tax, could that slow pre-sales at One Beverly Hills?
A, We’ve had a huge demand for purchases. If we didn’t, the financiers wouldn’t have supported this. If you have quality assets, location, product and execution, then you can overcome hurdles. That won’t apply to anybody. It would only apply to the best in class.
Arrogantly, I like to think that we are now seen as one of those best-in-class people who can deliver that. It’s very un-British to say that. But we landed the largest real estate loan in living history in non-data centers.
Q. Private credit has been roiled in recent months, including a surge in redemption requests from some major funds and fears of overvaluations. How does this factor in now?
A. There’s been a big trend toward private lenders over the last 10 years or so. And the vast majority of those probably are untouched by the current situation. You are seeing some of the larger players limit withdrawals because people are clearly nervous about the narrative they’re reading in the press. I think people will ride through these shocks.
But the market’s volatility in technology, AI and crypto over the course of the last six months –– up, down, such sharp moves –– has made people think twice and get nervous about their underlying credit positions. That would lead to a flight back to more solid, maybe a bit more boring asset classes like real estate. People understand the class and they want their money to be at work. This will play well for real estate.
I have to say, if I am in an asset class, and I can’t argue with any logic whether that asset is going to be worth $100 or zero in the next three years, I think you should be nervous about that. When I look at crypto, for example, it’s been as high as $125,000. I think it’s $66,000 today. So that’s almost half of its peak. And if I was to go around this room and ask each person whether it’s going to be $40,000 or $90,000, no one is going to have a clue. That’s a dangerous place to invest.
Q. How about AI? Is it as volatile as crypto?
A. You can’t deny AI. You’d be stupid to do so. AI, like the Internet, there will be a lot of winners, and there will be losers. In the internet boom in 2001 and 2002, there were hundreds of companies that got launched. There have been some outstanding winners. Amazon would be the greatest one from that period. But there were a lot of people who failed.
The impact on our own business from AI and what can be done to help the thinking of people, not replace, but help the thinking of people, it’s extraordinary.
Q. Miami is considered the epicenter of branded condos. Are we getting to a point of over-saturation?
A. I’d say there are two epicenters: here and Dubai. If you take a brand that doesn’t really have a DNA in real estate, then you are just doing it for a gloss.
Q. What about all these car brands, such as Aston Martin, Bentley and others popping up at condos?
A. Why does it speak to the underlying quality of real estate? Aman speaks to real estate. Delano speaks to real estate. I think there are commercial reasons. You can see apartment blocks around the world with the names of football teams. It’s just a marketing shtick. If you are going to do it, you want to ingrain the brand’s DNA through the development. If you are going to take a brand, you want to make sure that brand has the DNA. Because your buyer doesn’t want something that’s veneer thin.
Q. What’s next for Cain in South Florida?
We will be [developing] our Edgewater site next to Missoni Baia into multifamily. It will be a single tower. It will come up with more specificity in the next few weeks.
Q. A record number of apartments was completed in South Florida in 2024. Is the demand there for another luxury rental tower?
A. The demand of people who want to come and live down here will continue.
Q. Are you involved in the bayfront Brickell development site, which Oak Row Equities and OKO Group purchased for a record $520 million in December?
A. We are not involved in the real estate. Obviously, we are investors in Aman. The brand there won’t be Aman. It will be a new brand. I think the partners are thinking about what brand to bring and create. I don’t know what they are doing. I wouldn’t be surprised if they came up with something in the next six to nine months.
Q. Cain provided construction financing for Bizzi+Bilgili and Sumaida + Khurana’s The Fifth Miami Beach project. Is this where Miami-Dade County office development is at now? Focused on boutique projects instead of corporate towers?
A. On Miami Beach, yes. South of Fifth, it’s a great place to work.
Our Eldridge connections also did the financing for Starwood Capital Group and Mast Capital’s Perigon luxury condo project in Miami Beach.
[Over the past year, Cain merged its debt business with Eldridge, which consolidated it into its lending arm, while Cain is now focused on equity, though Eldridge’s lending arm remains a Cain partner.]
Q. You and many of your partners have stakes in professional sports teams. Tell us more. Why invest in sports?
A. Todd Boehly is involved with the L.A. Lakers and Dodgers, and I’m involved with Chelsea.
[Goldstein was part of a consortium that bought the professional soccer club in 2022 from billionaire Roman Abramovich, who was sanctioned that year by the United Kingdom and the European Union that year following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.]
You can talk about AI … but sports is a unique experience for everyone. That’s what we are seeing. That’s why the values in the sports franchises continue to grow. In terms of the U.S. and the World Cup, obviously we have hotels in Boston, Miami, L.A. and New York, all of which have got big games coming up.
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