Associated Group’s Nitin Motwani and Nick Perez team up for condo project at Miami Worldcenter

Two of South Florida’s biggest names in commercial real estate are joining forces for the first time to develop a condo tower in the heart of downtown Miami. The development will be part of the massive $4 billion Miami Worldcenter project which currently stands on 27 acres.

Courtesy of Merrimac Ventures and related group

The Crosby condo project at Miami Worldcenter

Merrimac Ventures, led by the family of Worldcenter co-developer Nitin Motwani, is partnering with Related Group to bring a 31-story, 450-unit condo tower to the planned development.

The Crosby will have no rental restrictions, so owners can rent their units for any length of time. It will be up to the owners to market their own units, but there will be staff on site to assist short-term visitors.

“We have overseas buyers who like the idea of ​​being able to leverage, whether it’s Airbnb, VRBO or a private broker or, frankly, themselves,” Motwani said. “They like this flexibility because it allows them to use the place when they’re in town and rent it when they’re not. I just hung up with a national shopper in Palm Beach who comes for the Heat games, the Marlins games, comes with his family, and they love the idea – they’re going to use it multiple times a year, but want that flexibility when they not.

Studio, one-, and two-bedroom residences will range from 350 square feet to 825 square feet. The building, designed by CFE architects and AvroKO interior designers, will have 22,000 square feet of amenities, including a wellness center with saunas and plunge pools, a club room with billiards, a theater, a private dining area and a resort-style rooftop pool deck to be serviced by a yet to be announced dining concept that will be located on the ground floor.

Units will start at $300,000. OneWorld Properties, led by CEO Peggy Olin, will handle sales exclusively. The project is expected to start in the first quarter of 2023 and be completed in early 2025.

The condo is named Crosby after a street in New York’s Soho neighborhood.

“Worldcenter is becoming the new center of downtown, the heart of downtown, so we wanted a name that resonated with people [as] metropolitan,” said Nick Perez, senior vice president of the Related Group.

Miami Worldcenter is one of the most ambitious urban projects underway in the United States. For decades, downtown Miami was ravaged by empty storefronts and saw little activity. In the early 2000s, Motwani and Art Falcone, directors of Miami Worldcenter Associates – a joint venture between Falcone Group and Los Angeles-based CIM Group – began assembling packages from dozens of different owners with plans to revitalize the city center.

The project — which has been touted as a “city within a city” – is now booming. Over the past few years, several developers have built different components. So far, 150K SF of retail has been completed and another 130K SF is under construction. Tenants expected to open this year include Sephora, Lucid Motors and a number of restaurants.

Residential offerings include two towers that were completed in 2019: the 569-unit Paramount Miami Worldcenter condo and Caoba, a 444-unit apartment tower developed by CIM Group and Falcone Group. WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann reportedly took a majority stake in this last building recently. Reports indicate another luxury rental tower, ZOM’s 434-unit Bezel project, opened last month.

Additional Worldcenter components are under construction or soon will be. This includes Legacy Hotel & Residences, a 50-story mixed-use tower with 310 residences atop a hotel, developed by Royal Palm Cos.; a 12-story, 351-room CitizenM boutique hotel; a 52-story, 560-unit apartment tower by New York developer Lalezarian; Kenect, a 450-unit hotel-oriented apartment tower from Chicago-based Akara Partners; and a second phase of Caoba. Additionally, real estate investor Witkoff and Chicago-based Monroe Capital acquired the site where a Marriott Marquis was once planned.

“There is no other product for sale at Miami Worldcenter. Everything else is already sold out,” Perez said.