Adam Neumann’s Flow won an El Portal development site with a $70.5 million offer that beat out Melo Group, The Real Deal has learned.
Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Thomas Rebull on Tuesday approved the sale of a 16-acre former trailer park at 8500 Biscayne Boulevard to an affiliate of Miami-based Flow. The expansive property landed in court receivership as a result of a 2020 lawsuit accusing the previous ownership group of defrauding 100 foreign investors out of more than $50 million.
An Avison Young team led by Michael Fay arranged last week’s court auction on behalf of the receiver, Michael Goldberg, a partner with Akerman law firm. Proceeds from the sale “will result in the recovery of a substantial amount of the victim’s losses,” Fay said in a statement.
Melo Group, which had submitted a stalking horse bid of $35 million in October, doubled its initial offer to $70.1 million, according to a source familiar with the court auction. But the Miami-based firm led by Carlos and Martin Melo, came up short by $400,000.
Unicapital Asset Management Group, a recently formed family office led by Miami insurance mogul Ivan Herrera, also participated, but dropped out early in the bidding process, the source added.
Jose Cueto, Unicapital’s vice president of real estate, said the firm did not want to get into a bidding war. “We took it to a certain number, and then it didn’t make sense for us to continue,” Cueto said. “[Flow] drove the price up.”
A Flow spokesperson declined comment about why Neumann targeted the El Portal site, and what he plans to build on it. The property is zoned for a 3 million-square-foot mixed-use project, and is approved for 150 apartments an acre, so a developer could build up to roughly 2,400 units.
Previously known as the Little Farm trailer park, the site has been vacant since 2016 when the village of El Portal and the previous ownership entity, led by Fu Jing “Leo” Wu, settled a lawsuit brought by 45 trailer residents by paying them each $8,000 for relocation costs. Wu also managed an entity that owned a former federal immigration building at 7880 Biscayne Boulevard in Miami.
The four-year-old lawsuit against Wu’s entities alleged that he misappropriated investors’ funds that were meant to redevelop both properties, and as a result jeopardized their ability to obtain permanent residency in the United States through the EB-5 visa program. The program bestows green cards to foreign investors who place at least $500,000 into a development project in the U.S.
Through his attorney, Wu has denied any wrongdoing. In 2023, the receiver and Wu entered into a settlement in which he agreed not to block any deals for the El Portal site and the immigration building site, which was purchased by Miami-based B Group Capital Management for $23 million in 2023. In exchange, Wu will get paid a total of $5 million from the sale proceeds of both properties.