April 2025 | Michael Fechter
SPOTLIGHT
The Miami Marlins are working with the Cordish Companies to make loanDepot Park more of a year-round destination. They plan to open Miami Live! next year with indoor and outdoor dining and entertainment spaces.
Cordish similarly has developed The Battery Atlanta and Texas Live with the Braves and Rangers and already operates Vivo!, a 62,000-sq.-ft. dining and entertainment center at Miami’s Dolphin Mall. It is building “The Pomp,” a 223-acre mixed-use resort destination in Pompano Beach.
The Marlins say the project represents the team’s commitment to the community. It ranked 29th in attendance out of 30 Major League Baseball teams in 2024, drawing 1.09 million fans. Local officials note that Miami Live! is privately financed.
GOVERNMENT
- Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava abandoned efforts to build a new trash incinerator after local communities and President Donald Trump’s son Eric objected. For now, the county will continue shipping waste out of the area as it seeks a new landfill. The county’s Doral incinerator, just a few miles from the Trump National Doral golf resort, was destroyed by fire in 2023. Levine Cava cited rising costs and likely legal challenges for reversing course on a new incinerator.
- Miami-Dade commissioners approved a $7.5-million incentive package to help a mystery national logistics and transportation company build a 550,000-sq.-ft. headquarters in an unincorporated area. It will hire at least 525 people at an average $135,000 salary “while retaining 1,100 current employees,” Levine Cava said in a memo to commissioners.
- Japan named Junya Nakano as its Consul General in Miami. He’s a veteran of Japan’s foreign affairs ministry, with previous posts in Russia, Australia and at the United Nations. More than 100 Japanese companies operate in Florida, and Nakano’s goal is to enhance trade.
TECH
- Miami-based renewable energy platform Origis Energy could see more than $1 billion in strategic investment from Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. and increased funding from existing sponsor Antin Infrastructure Partners, the company announced. The money will be used to enhance Origis’ independent power production and improve its portfolio of solar and battery storage abilities. Origis has a 1 gigawatt solar and storage operation in four states and has 3 gigawatts more being built or construction ready.
HIGHER ED
- Jeanette Nuñez, the state’s former lieutenant governor, was named interim president of Florida International University. Nuñez earned her undergraduate and master’s degree from FIU and previously was an adjunct faculty member. She replaces Kenneth Jessell, who had led FIU since 2022 and will remain as senior VP and chief administrative officer.
- Miami Dade College opened a Broadband Utilities Lab and fiber optics program at its North Campus in partnership with MasTec. The workforce development program within the Construction Trades Institute promises students handson experience to prepare them for telecommunications jobs.
REAL ESTATE
- Construction has started on The Delmore, a 12-story, 37-unit condominium being built on the Surfside site of Champlain Towers, which collapsed in 2021 killing 98 people. The smallest “mansion in the sky” in what’s touted as “Billionaires Triangle” will be 5,000 square feet, with a glass-bottom rooftop pool 125 feet above Miami Beach. Units offered by Dubai-based DAMAC run from $15 million-$33 million.
- If that’s too costly, Eldridge Real Estate Credit provided a $390-million construction loan for The Perigon Miami Beach, a little farther south on Collins Avenue in an area dubbed “Millionaire’s Row.” The Perigon, which broke ground a year ago, should open in 2027 with two- to four-bedroom units starting at more than $10 million. A joint venture with Mast Capital and a Starwood Capital Group affiliate, it’s 75% pre-sold.
- Swire Properties and Related Ross have pulled the plug on building Miami’s largest office tower. One Brickell City Centre would have risen 68 stories and 1,000 feet high above Brickell Avenue — but demand reportedly did not materialize.
IN MEMORIAM
“You will never be bored in the apparel business.” — George Feldenkreis, founder and chairman of Perry Ellis International, in an interview with the Miami Herald. Feldenkreis died in February at 89 in Miami Beach.
PROMOTIONS
- Kristina Newman-Scott is the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation’s new vice president for arts. She has worked 20 years in the visual and performing arts, most recently as the first executive director at New York Public Radio’s Jerome L. Greene Performance Art Space. The Knight Foundation has invested more than $466 million in the past 20 years to help artists and arts organizations in eight focus cities, including Miami.