The First United Methodist Church site in downtown Miami is now for sale, and could sell for north of $60 million.
The church currently owns and occupies 1.15-acre development site at 400 Biscayne Boulevard. HFF’s Jaret Turkell and Maurice Habif are listing the property unpriced, Turkell told The Real Deal, but expect that it will sell in the $60 million range.
The site has 305 feet of frontage along Biscayne, and is zoned under Miami 21 as T6-80, which allows for about 1,150 units, 1.8 million square feet and unlimited height, pending FAA approval, according to marketing materials. Allowed uses include hotel, residential, retail and general commercial.
“The really cool thing about it is it’s parallel to Biscayne, so the views will be spectacular,” Turkell told TRD.
The church, which has never been on the market, is looking for a buyer that will allow it to stay on-site until construction of a new project begins and is also requesting a 20,000-square-foot to 30,000-square-foot space in whatever is eventually built, Turkell said.
The 28,000-square-foot building, built in 1981, takes up about half the block including a paved parking lot. If and when it sells, the site joins a number of other churches, temples and other religious institutions to profit off of their land and move elsewhere in South Florida.
HFF will market the site for about a month and then have a call for offers, he said.
It’s next to a Miami Dade College Wolfson parking lot at 520 Biscayne Boulevard, which the college is currently in the process of developing in a public-private partnership. The Related Group is currently ranked as the top bidder, and has proposed turning the 2.6-acre site into a 75-story condominium tower, a 39-story office tower, a 100-room hotel and private club.
Earlier this year, Kawa Capital Management bought into the Holiday Inn site at 340 Biscayne Boulevard, which has been through approvals for a mixed-use tower.
And just south at 300 Biscayne, Property Markets Group is developing the site into two phases, a rental tower geared toward millennials and a luxury condo tower that has not yet launched.