Tough sell: With no buyers for its 1928 courthouse, Miami-Dade plans an auction

The building is so old that Al Capone once visited, so in need of repair that multiple floors have been declared off-limits over the years and so outdated that the owner is building a $267 million modern replacement on land it owns next door.

Those are the downsides to Miami-Dade County’s 1928 civil courthouse, and buyers apparently have noticed.

On Tuesday, Miami-Dade commissioners voted to auction off the 28-story building at 73 W. Flagler St. sometime next year after the administration of Mayor Daniella Levine Cava failed to find a buyer for the property.

Miami-Dade hoped to get at least $50 million for the building — cash that’s supposed to offset the cost of the 23-story modern courthouse that is getting ready to open next door. Without someone willing to purchase a building where Capone once stood trial for perjury nine decades ago, the county expects to be spending millions of dollars a year to keep it in sellable shape once all the judges and court staff move out by Dec. 31.

“We’re already paying for a courthouse,” Levine Cava told the Miami Herald after Tuesday’s vote approving the auction sale recommended by her administration. “We don’t need two.”

County leaders had hoped to pitch the historic downtown building as a potential classy conversion into a mix of apartments, hotel rooms and office space.

While the building itself is governed by Miami’s strict renovation rules for historic buildings, the footprint has space for building a modern addition, county officials said.

But when Miami-Dade put the building up for sale last year, only one serious buyer expressed interest, county officials said. That was an entity, GFO Acquisitions, controlled by Miami developer Russell Galbut. The Galbut entity offered a combination of land downtown Miami and cash in exchange for the courthouse, but there was a catch.

The Galbut entity also wanted to be paid at least $10 million a year as a “maintenance fee” for the historic courthouse, according to a memo by Miami-Dade Commissioner Eileen Higgins, whose district includes the courthouse.

Her term as a commissioner ends Wednesday because she had to resign her county office ahead of Tuesday’s Miami election, where she’s a candidate for city mayor. At her last commission meeting, Higgins sponsored the legislation calling for an auction of the courthouse property.

“I don’t want to see it sitting empty for years and years to come,” Higgins told commissioners before the vote.