Developer Asi Cymbal closed Wednesday on a $4.8 million purchase of land in Dania Beach for a planned multifamily project across the street from Dania Pointe.
Cymbal bought the 2.4-acre site at 150 Bryan Road, through a company called Dania Pointe Waterfront, LLC. John DeMarco of RE/MAX represented the seller in the deal, Project USA LLC.
Cymbal said Miami-based New Wave Loans provided a $3.85 million mortgage on the vacant canal-front property just east of Dania Pointe, on the northeast corner of the intersection of Bryan Road and Stirling Road. Cymbal put the site under contract in early 2019.
His plans are to build an eight-story, 301 unit building with studios and one-, two- and three-bedroom units. It will have a waterfront boardwalk and a boat club with about 20 slips, where members can dock their boats or rent boats. Amenities also will include a gym, pool, dog park, co-working space with private offices, outdoor picnic and barbeque areas, a butterfly garden, and a meditation garden.
Monthly rents will start at $1,400. Cymbal said. “It’s going to be affordable luxury,” he said. “Our goal here is to be the lowest-cost luxury product in the area.”
The Miami-based developer expects to get a construction loan within 60 days for the multifamily development, which will cost an estimated $70 million. “We’d like to break ground this year and be completed in the first half of 2022,” he said. “By that time, I think much of the economy should be back on track.”
He said his development will be a “super-hygienic building with sanitizing stations throughout” and shared amenities designed for social distancing. The building also may include a negative-ionization air purification system. CES Design Group in Deerfield Beach is the project architect.
“We actually think this is going to be a new lifestyle … whether the pandemic is behind us or not,” Cymbal said. “Part of our market is people who would ordinarily live in downtown Fort Lauderdale but don’t want to be in a high-density market.”
His development site is on the southern end of an 11-acre block along a canal, populated mainly by marine businesses. Cymbal worked with the seller of the site and three other property owners to get the entire block rezoned in October. The Dania Beach City Commission changed the zoning from “general business” and “industrial research office marine” to “planned small lot mixed-use development.”
In addition to his Dania Beach project, Cymbal also plans Marina Lofts, a high-rise residential development in downtown Fort Lauderdale that remains unbuilt. “As soon as we’re under construction in Dania, we’ll turn our attention 100 percent to Fort Lauderdale,” he said.
Cymbal said his development site in Dania Beach is appealing mainly because of its proximity to Dania Pointe, a sprawling, 102-acre mixed-use project developed by New York-based Kimco Realty.
“Dania Pointe, despite Covid-19 and all the turmoil in our industry, is holding its own,” said Paul Puma, president of the southern region of Kimco. The first phase of Dania Pointe is 95 percent leased and the second phase is 61 percent leased, he said.
He said Kimco plans to announce a lease agreement within 45 days with another grocery store chain to occupy a store previously built at Dania Pointe for Lucky’s Market, which closed nearly all of its Florida stores and canceled plans to open new ones earlier this year.
Construction at Dania Pointe has slowed periodically as workers test positive for Covid-19, Puma said, but new buildings will open by the first quarter of 2021 for about a dozen tenants including Anthropologie, Improv Comedy Club, Regal Cinemas and Urban Outfitters.
The mixed-use Dania Pointe development ultimately will include 800,000 square feet of retail space, about 1,000 residential units, a Marriott and an AC by Marriot with a combined total of 350 hotel rooms, and a new corporate campus for Spirit Airlines, now based in Miramar. Puma said the airline is on pace to start construction in the second half of 2021.
Spirit reported in a May 6 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it paid $41 million for 8.5 acres and acquired another 2.6 acres through a 99-year lease agreement to build its new corporate campus in Dania Beach. “In connection with the lease agreement, the company is expected to build a 200-unit residential building,” Spirit reported in the SEC filing.