
Mirador Parking Assemblage
This property is located at 1000 West Avenue in the famed “South Beach” district of Miami Beach. At the time, the property was known as “The Forte Towers” residential rental project, which was also targeted for acquisition by The Charles E. Smith Residential Company (“CESRC”), one of the largest multi-family rental unit owners in the United States. During CERSC’s due diligence, it was discovered that additional parking facilities would have to be provided due to an expired ‘grandfather’ exemption that negatively and significantly impacted the property’s parking. If a subsequent owner of the property could not remedy this parking issue, the property would be deemed an illegal, non-conforming use, triggering the assessment of ongoing, and excessive, penalties and fees. Moreover, this lack of parking put the property at a competitive disadvantage in comparison to its competitive set, as those properties were of much more recent construction, and had plenty of parking on-site, whereby Forte/Mirador did not.
CESRC retained Mr. Laskody to conduct an analysis on how to remedy this parking dilemma. As part of this assignment, he inventoried all potential sites that were either adjoining or adjacent to, the Forte/Mirador property that would also make the best candidates for an assembled site. Mr. Laskody ultimately chose ten separate properties, each with a separate owner and their own individual property folio ID numbers. In order to prevent a ‘hold-out’ scenario, Mr. Laskody set up ten separate ownership entities with ten different principals; using a combination of Florida and Delaware entities, Mr. Laskody kept the assemblage quiet while quashing the possibility of the neighboring owners to strategize. Because all of the entities and principals were unique, no one in the area anticipated an assemblage, and in the process, a hold-out was thwarted. This resulted in the assemblage of a 16,800-square foot site that was ultimately improved with a six-story parking garage facility that was controlled by CESRC, and in the process not only satisfied the non-compliance but also provided enough parking to make the Mirador competitive in the marketplace.