18-acre development site hits market in North Miami Beach

A 17.7-acre parcel of land in North Miami Beach is up for sale as the city tries to attract developers with new zoning regulations.
“This is the only site in the area that is a blank slate,” said Cary Cohen, senior vice president at Flagler Real Estate Services, which is handling the sale. “You could do retail, commercial, hotel, office, even a charter school. And it’s shovel-ready.”

The roughly triangular lot, a former distribution site for Peoples Gas, is bordered on the north by Northeast 159th Street, on the west by Northeast 19th Place and on the southeast by West Dixie Highway. It lies just to the west of Biscayne Boulevard.
The current owner, real-estate investor Jacob Elharar, said he would be willing to sell all of the site, which is being marketed under the name Biscayne Village, or just part of it.

“We’ve had offers in the $30 million to $50 million range,” said Elharar, who paid $17 million for the land last year through a Delaware-based corporation. Elharar has sought development partners for the site in the past. Its previous use by the gas distributor required environmental remediation to remove contamination.
A lawsuit alleging that Elharar and partner Amram Adar unfairly took over real-estate broker Emile Farah’s stake in the property was recently settled out of court, according to Elharar’s attorney Joseph Geller, who also serves in the Florida House of Representatives.
In March, the city of North Miami Beach rezoned about 41 acres of land to allow for high-density, mixed-use development. Biscayne Village lies in one of those rezoned areas. Developers can now build up to 2,300 residential units and 2.5 million square feet of commercial space on the site, which has an address at 15780 W. Dixie Hwy.
“The overall vision is to capitalize on the world-class location that we have here in North Miami Beach,” said Mayor George Vallejo. “We had to change our codes in order to support people coming in, reinvesting, redeveloping.”

Elharar said he moved on the land last year because he believed the rezoning would pass the city council.
“We knew the city’s agenda was to move things forward,” he said.
Just to the northeast of the Biscayne Village site, a team of developers recently paid $23.5 million for the land that Dean’s Gold strip club now calls home. The new owners, Privé Land Banking and CK Holding Group, said they plan to redevelop the property.
Also nearby, developers 13th Floor Investments and Key International have announced a plan to build two 32-story, luxury condo towers on bayfront land.

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