Miami Beach-based American Riviera Real Estate Co. offered a final written settlement of $1.5 million ($120 per sf), plus $470,000 in attorney's fees, court costs and related expenses to end an eminent domain action over the prime 12,500-sf parcel.
The Miami Beach City Commission approved the settlement offer during a special meeting Wednesday morning, Deputy City Attorney Robert Dixon tells GlobeSt.com.
In accepting the offer, the city stopped a potentially expensive civil trial. The city sought land belonging to American Riviera and Ronald Bloomberg, the company's president.
"The defendant (also) is voluntary dismissing, with prejudice, two other pending cases--one in front of a special zoning master and one before the circuit court," Dixon says. "Lastly, the defendants, including Bloomberg personally, are giving the city and Miami Beach Redevelopment Agency complete and general releases and concluding all matters growing out of the construction, use and operation of the property as a regional library, as well as any zoning issues or challenges to the comprehensive development plan or any challenges to design issues."
Speaking through a spokeswoman identified only as Regina, Bloomberg expressed an interest on Wednesday to a request from GlobeSt.com for comment but apparently changed his mind and did not respond after having been given 20 hours advance notice to do so by this publication.
In response to an earlier article, Bloomberg characterized published information in GlobeSt.com about the then-proposed settlement as inaccurate. But he did not cite specific inaccuracies after being asked to do so by this publication.
"For the record, my properties are not for sale--not to the city of Miami Beach or any party," Bloomberg says in the written response to a May 15 article published in GlobeSt.com.
"I am effectively being forced to sell, at gunpoint, to an entity that has an ill-conceived master plan and numerous alternatives to see its project to fruition. But this is not the true motivation behind the city's interests in acquiring my properties.
"Municipal governments have often abused their discretion when it comes to land use, certainly, insofar as zoning and eminent domain are concerned," he said in his complaint to GlobeSt.com editors. "By not confirming certain material facts, your news service, in its own small way, facilitated the corruption that is taking place on Miami Beach."
In its settlement offer to the city, American Riviera Real Estate and the affiliated Palm Court at 23rd Street Ltd. proposed accepting $1.5 million for the 12,500-sf parcel; $225,000 to cover court costs; and $245,000 for attorney's fees.
In addition, the city agreed to provide Palm Court, which argued it owns certain lease rights on the disputed parcel, a waiver on fees for 18 tenant-parking decals for up to 28 months and two valet-ramping parking spaces for up to 2,700 days.
"Those funds will be deposited in the court registry, and by law will be subject to claims of the Miami-Dade tax collector for three years," Dixon says. "It would also be subject to any claims by mortgages, judgments, creditors or lien holders."
Once the city deposits the settlement money, Dixon says the city then could complete plans for the last component, a world-class cultural campus.
"This was a very significant and important accomplishment for the Beach," Dixon says. "Now we will see all the advantages of a true world-class, regional library."
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