Biscayne Landing is a 193 acres master-planned community located in North Miami, Florida within a 2,000 acre enclave on Biscayne Bay. In 2007, Boca Developers built a twin-tower residential community on the site with 373 units. In 2009, iStar Residential, a division of iStar Financial, purchased 160 of the unsold residences and leased a majority of them while the real estate market was in recovery. In late 2013, the project was renamed One Fifty One at Biscayne. The rental units are being sold as condominiums. The site is bordered to the east by Biscayne Bay and Oleta River State Park, Florida's largest remaining coastal mangrove preserve and urban park, to the west by commercial developments. It is notable as one of the largest residential projects ever planned on a former Superfund site and a demonstration of the excesses of the housing bust. The site also reflects one of the largest write-offs in securitized mortgage history with a $196 million writeoff of an initial $200 million investment.
History
Biscayne Landing is the result of a partnership between the City of North Miami and Boca Developers. The city has leased the former superfundlandfill to Boca Developers for two hundred years. As part of the partnership agreement with the city, Boca Developers will match the construction of new residences at Biscayne Landing with an equal number of new or rehabilitated affordable housing units on brownfield sites within the city. In addition, Boca Developers has also committed up to $25 million toward the renovation and expansion of North Miami's library, the construction of an Olympic training facility, and construction of the David Lawrence, Jr. K-8 School. The Miami-Dade commission has agreed to contribute $31 million of the costs of the Munisport cleanup, using part of a $130 million bond issue earmarked to clean up other polluted sites in the county. Wells Fargo Bank filed a foreclosure suit against the developer in August 2009. iStar Financial purchased 160 unsold units while the property was in foreclosure and put them on the market as condominiums in late 2013. The majority of the 160 condominiums were sold to foreign investors.
Environmental Condition
Biscayne Landing's environmental standing is described as "brownfield," which the government defines as property for which the expansion, redevelopment or reuse may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of contaminants. It is located on the former Munisport landfill. Multiple government agencies have tested the groundwater under the landfill and all detected a soup of about 30 chemicals, from lead to PCBs, but these chemicals are generally at levels that the EPA has deemed low enough to allow "unlimited use and unrestricted exposure." The City of North Miami claims that the only remaining environmental concerns at the site are Ammonia contamination in the groundwater, and methane from the biodegradation of the buried solid waste. There are treatment wells on-site to remove the ammonia, with an estimated completion time of 20 years.
Future
In 2013, with the real estate market in full recovery, iStar brought on The DevStar Group, a Miami-based development, sales and investment firm to market and sell the 160 units. Dev Star Group principals successfully turned around two other local condominium projects — Paramount Bay in Miami and Ocean House on South Beach. The homeowners association renamed the twin towers as One Fifty One at Biscayne, and the developer began selling units as condominiums in late 2013. Several million dollars worth of amenities and improvements are currently underway at the development. Separately, the property, which is currently owned by the City of North Miami, was leased in 2012 for 200 years to the Oleta Partners group, which is owned by real estate developersMichael Swerdlow and the Lefrak Organization. Plans for the site include covering up all remaining lakes, building an 850,000 square foot shopping center focused on big-box stores, a new residential condominium community, offices and a hotel. Oleta Partners has taken a number of steps to remediate the groundwater under the property, including designing, permitting and building a Class 1 wastewater injection well. A pump station has been designed and is under review. A remedial action plan has been approved by the Regulatory Economic Resources department of Miami-Dade County. Separately, the city of North Miami says “that in the 3 or so years that the Oaks buildings have been occupied, no methane gas alarm has alerted.”
