Moishe Mana is not quite done buying properties for his downtown Miami master plan.
The investor and developer paid $7.3 million on Wednesday for the building at 118 Flagler Street, formerly home to The Children’s Place store, he announced. He owns the properties surrounding the site.
Mana is reportedly nearly finished assembling his Flagler District portfolio downtown, which now totals more than 1.3 million square feet spread across 70 buildings. Next, construction would begin on a large scale. So far, his major accomplishment has been the Nikola Tesla Innovation Hub, which is expected to be completed early next year.
Rendering of Mana’s downtown Miami redevelopment (Mana Common)
“I’ve acquired the critical mass needed to pull off a project of this scale,” he said in a press release issued Thursday.
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The Children’s Place store totals 10,600 square feet on a 6,000-square-foot lot. The building was constructed in 1930. Property records show M. O. M. Realty Corp., led by Marshall Kaplan and Olivia Halpern, sold the building to Mana.
In December, Mana paid $29.5 million for the Shoreland Arcade at 120 Northeast First Street and about $4.8 million for the building at 1 West Flagler Street. Sergio Rok’s Rok Enterprises sold the downtown buildings to Mana.
Mana has spent roughly half a billion dollars over several years assembling land downtown, where he plans to create Mana Common, a startup and tech hub that would be similar to one in Tel Aviv with residential, office and entertainment uses.
Along the way, Mana, who also owns a massive portfolio in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood, has faced delays and starts and stops. Early last year, Mana announced that Silicon Valley investor and accelerator Plug and Play planned to open an office within his Flagler district project, but that is no longer happening.
He began work last year at the 777 International Mall building at 145 East Flagler Street downtown, and construction is underway on the 13-story office building at 155 South Miami Avenue, also downtown, which will be the Nikola Tesla Innovation Hub.
Mana has also been assembling land in Allapattah, a working class neighborhood west of Wynwood that’s also undergoing major redevelopment. He recently paid $16 million for 10 properties along Northwest Seventh Avenue between 28th and 29th streets.