In South Florida real estate, self-promotion comes in hearty doses. For developers, generating buzz for themselves and their planned projects is as vital as scoring approvals and construction financing.
Not so for Pablo Castro and Laura Tauber.
The duo proposes a 3,233-unit apartment complex with six towers, ranging from 26 stories to 37 stories, in Miami-Dade County’s West Little River neighborhood. They filed their application last month under the Live Local Act, a state law that permits development of much bigger projects than zoning allows, in exchange for designating at least 40 percent of the units as affordable housing.
After the legislature recently tweaked the Live Local Act, first passed last year, to make it more appealing to developers, builders have filed a torrent of applications.
Castro and Tauber’s project stands out as the biggest Live Local Act proposal in South Florida –– and the biggest one in general in the tri-county region in recent memory.
“When was the last time you have seen this many units built in one project?” said Matthew Scott, a land use and zoning attorney based in Fort Lauderdale. “There are very few groups locally or nationally or internationally that have built a project this size.”
Yet, unlike other developers seizing on the Live Local Act, Castro and Tauber have opted to remain outside the public eye.
Lifting the veil
Castro, who moved to Miami-Dade County from his native Spain about two years ago, has made millions of dollars in private investments in the area over the past five years, a source said.
It’s all been done in stealth mode. Castro has left no traces in public records of where he’s invested and if he’s purchased a home in Miami-Dade. Out of the three limited liability companies registered in his name in Florida, only one is tied to a deed. Through the entity, Castro paid $29.3 million for the 11.8-acre West Little River development site in October. He didn’t take out a mortgage for the deal, signifying he paid cash.
Tauber’s work on Holland Park has come with zero ballyhoo. Not even a consultant working on the project knew of her involvement. Her collaboration was first revealed to The Real Deal when Castro invited a reporter to his North Miami office to join him and a person he identified in an email as his project “partner,” who turned out to be Tauber.
During the meeting and in follow up calls, Castro and Tauber refused to be interviewed for this story, reiterating they prefer to stay outside the spotlight. Sources also declined to provide insight on Castro, some saying he is “very private.”
But through records and news clips, TRD stitched together the developers’ past endeavors.
Castro’s projects have been in Europe, primarily in Spain. Tauber has been involved in South Florida real estate since at least the late 1990s, when she co-founded Bay Harbor Islands-based commercial real estate firm Taubco with her husband, Irwin Tauber.
It’s unclear if Tauber is pursuing the Live Local project on her own or on behalf of Taubco. A source said “Taubco may be involved” in Holland Park.
Castro, 52, is the same person as Pau Castro Sáez, who at one point earned a reputation as Spain’s biggest developer. The original spelling of his first name as Pau is in Catalan, as he hails from Barcelona. Pablo is in Spanish.
As a teen, Castro started working for his father’s nightclubs and entered real estate while in college in the mid-1990s. He bought apartments in Barcelona with little money down, renovated and quickly flipped the units, according to a 2022 profile of him on UBS’ website, which identifies him as a client of the bank. The story focused on Castro’s ambition to pursue a prefabricated construction method on a large scale, as the developer lamented the lack of evolution of construction methods.
Castro’s apartment flipping venture chipped at his conscience because he sometimes had to evict tenants after he bought their distressed homes.
“It is really sad work. You have to go in person with the police. It’s horrible. I remember the day, like it was yesterday, when I said, ‘Nada más,’” Castro told UBS.
Not much is known about his subsequent projects except that he got his father, Gabriel Castro Martínez, to back a family real estate firm, according to the UBS profile. The decade-long venture ended due to disagreements over the firm’s future between the younger Castro and his father, who is described as “autocratic” in the UBS article.
Castro may have remained involved in the nightclub business into adulthood, as some Spanish media reports say he and his business partner, Pedro Molina Porras, managed a venue in the town of Mataró in Catalonia.
In 2007, Castro and Molina founded Barcelona-based Grupo Corp. It was the height of the housing crisis, and the duo used little capital, seizing on market distress and deep property discounts. In one month, Castro pre-sold 200 units, largely because he could afford to offer deep discounts since he bought land for similar discounts, he told UBS.
Over the years, Castro and Molina expanded Grupo Corp, increasingly relying on debt instead of using equity. They eventually became known as the biggest landowners in the Barcelona area, according to various media reports. By 2017, the firm’s debt had reached 142 million euros (about $153.5 million today), or double than in 2016, according to a report in online business publication El Confidencial.
Grupo Corp’s market share grew from there. In 2019, Castro and Molina partnered with Spain’s Grifols family, owners of the Grifols pharmaceutical conglomerate, to develop thousands of apartments in the Barcelona area. The joint venture planned more than 2,700 apartments with an investment of 600 million euros (roughly $650 million today) over three years, business newspaper El Economista reported.
Under the joint venture, Grupo Corp held a 34 percent stake and provided buildable sites, while Scranton, a firm led by the Grifols family and former executives at their pharmaceutical company, held a 66 percent stake. The Grifols also provided development funds, according to El Confidencial. The Grifols pharmaceutical company wasn’t an investor in the JV.
Following the partnership, Grupo Corp ranked first among Barcelona developers with the most projects -– 627 units in four projects –– on tap in 2021 in the city and surrounding areas, according to Madrid-based real estate data platform Brains RE.
Castro exited Grupo Corp altogether about two years ago, according to a representative at the firm who answered the company’s phone.
Grupo Corp’s current portfolio consists of more than 5,600 developed homes spanning 9.5 million square feet, with a pipeline of another 2,000, according to its website and LinkedIn. The firm consists of housing development arm Corp, build-to-rent division BeCorp, apartment manager ÛpStanding Services and construction arm Arkspot. Much of the firm’s website is dedicated to promoting its projects’ amenities and common areas, claiming Grupo Corp’s projects are not just places to live but places where communities are created.
Foreign developers without experience in South Florida often partner with a local who is familiar with the in and outs of approvals and building here. For Castro, that South Florida local was Laura Tauber.
Taubco started with small investments in the early 2000s. It paid $4.1 million in three deals for three waterfront apartment buildings with a total of 56 units, as well as a one-story, 6,300-square-foot office building in Bay Harbor Islands, according to records. In 2007, the firm expanded to Vero Beach on Florida’s Treasure Coast, scooping up the Vero Beach Outlets mall for $38.3 million.
Taubco is best known for developing and investing in shopping plazas. In the early 2000s in North Miami Beach, the firm developed the 54,000-square-foot Keystone Plaza, the 120,000-square-foot Biscayne Commons plaza and nearby Arena Shops building, records show. In 2009, Taubco completed the four-story Causeway Square office and retail building in North Miami. Taubco’s other investments include paying $14.3 million in 2006 for Biscayne Harbor Shops in Aventura.
The firm went through a rough patch during the Great Recession. After BNY Mellon sold its troubled Miami-based subsidiary, Mellon United National Bank, to Banco Sabadell in 2010, Mellon United filed foreclosure suits against Taubco entities that owned certain properties. The foreclosures were for a $4 million loan on the Bay Harbor Islands apartment buildings, a $2.2 million loan on the office building in Bay Harbor Islands, and a $12.2 million loan tied to Biscayne Harbor Shops and a 4.2-acre vacant lot near Causeway Square.
Many records in the cases aren’t available digitally, making it difficult to discern exactly what led to the suits. Yet, during the recession, refinancing and forbearance were hard to come by, especially from banks that had purchased troubled lenders. Many opted to file foreclosures.
Records show Taubco’s cases were resolved through settlements and dismissed, with the firm keeping most of its properties. In 2011, it sold Biscayne Harbor Shops for $14 million, a slight discount from its purchase price, after a judge approved a settlement in that foreclosure case. Taubco lost the Vero Beach Outlets, selling it out of bankruptcy in 2011. The firm’s affiliate that owned the mall had filed for Chapter 11 reorganization in 2009 after LNV Corp., which took over a $32 million Prudential Mortgage Capital loan on the property, had filed to foreclose.
Taubco profited from its Bay Harbor Islands lots, formerly home to apartment buildings, by fully entitling the sites for condo development and selling them to Ian Bruce Eichner in 2021 for a combined $29.5 million.
Most recently, Laura Tauber has been involved in Harry Macklowe’s New York-based firm and the Pérez family’s Related Group’s bulk condo purchases and planned redevelopment in North Bay Village, TRD has learned.
State corporate records list her name in the entity Macklowe used to purchase units at the Majestic Isle condo at 7946 East Drive, one of the buildings at which Macklowe and Related have been making bulk buyouts. One source said Tauber is a partner in the planned project.
Irwin Tauber, who through an affiliate owns an eight-bedroom mansion in exclusive Indian Creek Village that he and Laura Tauber lease from the entity, have maintained a low-key profile over the years, except for unwanted attention in 2020. A lawsuit alleged Irwin Tauber ran over a swimmer in Biscayne Bay with his boat, slicing her leg and causing permanent injuries. The swimmer’s suit against Tauber is ongoing.
Live Local Act bonanza?
As developers have jumped on the Live Local Act, experts caution that the state law may not turn out to be the bonanza some envision.
Developers are finding that despite being able to build bigger projects, elevated interest rates, skyrocketing insurance and still high construction costs have made new projects cost prohibitive, especially for the parking podiums at the base of apartment towers.
In one case, when zoning attorney Rachel Streitfeld finished due diligence for a potential Live Local Act project on an apparently perfect site, she said the owner looked at the numbers and opted out of pursuing the development. “As far as smaller developers who don’t have the resources or the access to financing, it makes it hard for them to pencil out a Live Local project,” she said.
At Holland Park, the developers avoided the issue of an expensive parking podium by planning two nine-story garages separate from the apartment towers, said Anthony De Yurre, the attorney who filed the project application.
The project would “offer significant open space and amenities beyond anything comparable,” De Yurre said, describing Holland Park as having a “campus-like” atmosphere.
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Scott, the land use and zoning attorney, said that separate garages will alleviate some of the parking construction expenses, though “not entirely.”
As Holland Park is still in the early stages, Castro and Tauber offered to speak on the record in the coming weeks and months, once they are further in the approval process and their project is on more solid footing.
Whether Holland Park pans out — and Castro and Tauber join South Florida’s attention-seeking game — is yet to play out.