It’s been nearly a decade since developer Moishe Mana began buying real estate in Miami, and now his team has released a construction timeline for his major redevelopment of downtown.
The Mana Group unveiled plans for the project at a community meeting on Tuesday night, giving a rare glimpse of the first buildings that the development firm is working to renovate or rebuild.
A map, designed by Zyscovich Architects and shared by Mana Group, highlights 11 buildings between Southeast First Street and North Miami Avenue that would be delivered between the first quarter of 2021 and the fourth quarter of 2024.
Mana began acquiring land in downtown Miami in 2014 and has spent more than $350 million assembling roughly 45 buildings on or near Flagler Street. Most recently, one of his companies paid $2.3 million for a three-story building at 108 South Miami Avenue.
At the meeting on Tuesday, Dylan Finger, previously managing director of Mana Miami and now a consultant for the firm, also discussed the long-delayed Flagler streetscape project, which will re-start in March, after the Super Bowl is held in Miami in February. Mana led that project’s design with Zyscovich, though it is being funded by the city, county, Miami Downtown Development Authority and property owners.
Finger said the plan is to have ground-floor retail spaces and facades renovated or completed once the streetscape project is delivered.
A rendering of the project
A portion of Mana’s project calls for 200,000 square feet of tech-oriented space for startups, venture capital firms and related companies, as well as amenities that include a gym, said Uri Adoni, managing director of Mana Tech. Adoni, who has been a partner at the $1.3 billion Jerusalem Venture Partners fund, said the goal is to have downtown Miami be the heart of the city’s tech scene.
Mana will soon start renovating the office building at 155 South Miami Avenue, where Miami International University of Art and Design confirmed it will occupy. A startup hub is planned on five floors of the same building. Records show a Mana affiliate paid $32 million for the 13-story office building in 2015. The company will focus on attracting tenants like law firms and accountants to the building, Adoni added.
A rendering of the project
That building and the property at 44 to 48 East Flagler Street, known as the Woolworth building, could be completed by the first quarter of 2021, according to Mana’s map.
The 49-story apartment tower at 200 North Miami Avenue, for which Mana submitted plans in 2016, could be delivered in the third quarter of 2021, according to the map. It would micro apartments.
A spice and food hall with a park, on Northeast First Street between South Miami Avenue and Northeast First Avenue, would be ready by the first quarter of 2021. The 777 Mall building at 145 East Flagler Street, has an estimated completion date of the third quarter of 2023, according to Mana’s map.
“Each building has a delivery date of when we’re expecting to deliver the finished product. Some properties are very straightforward — we change the floors and that’s it. Some of them really need to be demolished and restructured. It really depends on the size of the project,” Adoni said. “We’re all starting in parallel, [but] they will be mature in different timelines.”