Renovation estimate soars to $255M for Miami-Dade’s suburban government center

Renovation costs have tripled for Miami-Dade’s plan to convert a 52-year-old office building into a modern West Dade Government Center, a project that’s now more expensive than what the county said it would cost to build a new complex from scratch nearly two years ago.

The idea behind the West Dade Government Center is to find a permanent home for the county’s permitting center, which currently rents office space at a strip mall in the Tamiami area. Miami-Dade would also provide space to other agencies, like Water and Sewer, in order to create a “one-stop” location for permitting needs in the suburbs.

But what started as a $256 million price tag to purchase and renovate a Flagler Street building that was built for Florida Power and Light in the 1970s has ballooned into a nearly $438 million undertaking, according to internal documents.

The county paid $183 million for the old FPL complex in 2024, and the original renovation estimate was $73 million. A consultant’s estimate of renovation costs recently hit $255 million, which includes a $29 million buffer to cover future price increases. The higher renovation estimates include removing asbestos and mold that was later discovered in the building, plus pricey upgrades for electrical, air-conditioning and other modernization necessities, according to a February report by Savills, the global real estate company hired by Miami-Dade to hash out costs for the planned West Dade Government Center.

“When you purchase a building, there is a price for purchasing it. And you estimate how much it is going to cost you once you move in,” Carladenise Edwards, a top deputy to Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, said in a Tuesday interview with the Miami Herald. “You move in and you start knocking down walls, and you discover you have some really important decisions to make.”

Levine Cava is preparing to ask county commissioners to authorize a higher renovation budget for a project that was already one of costliest real estate acquisitions in history for Miami-Dade. The idea of spending more is facing pushback.

“If what you’re telling me is true, then I have concerns,” Commissioner Juan Carlos Bermudez, chair of the board’s Government Efficiency and Transparency Committee, told the Herald this week after a reporter shared the new cost estimates. “Serious concerns.”

Property taxes aren’t a substantial part of the funding for the proposed West Dade Government Center, which would earn money by charging rent to county agencies like Water and Sewer and Regulatory and Economic Resources that rely on fees for the bulk of their budgets.

But those agencies face their own budget pressures, and commissioners are often reluctant to raise fees on residents to increase funding for the agencies.

Delaying the opening of the West Dade center, which had been projected to open in 2027, would bring additional financial challenges, since the administration is counting on the agencies’ rent revenue to start paying back the $235 million that Miami-Dade has already borrowed for the planned complex at 9250 W. Flagler St. in the Fontainebleau neighborhood.

Purchase of the old FPL center faced scrutiny before County Commission vote

Levine Cava’s pursuit of the old FPL building drew critical headlines in the lead-up to county commissioners’ approval of the purchase of the 20-acre site in June 2024.

Seven months earlier, she proposed quick commission votes on purchasing two office complexes: the FPL building and a one-time insurance company headquarters in South Miami-Dade, for use as county offices.

The deals were worth a combined $365 million, with both prices higher than what appraisers hired by the county said the properties would be worth on the open market.

After a Herald story questioned the proposed sales prices, Levine Cava pulled the proposals in order to try and negotiate better terms. She ended up abandoning the South Dade purchase. She also announced a $23 million drop in the proposed purchase price for the FPL building, negotiated by the deal’s main backer on the commission, Chair Anthony Rodriguez.

His district includes the FPL site, and he praised the planned purchase as a wise long-term investment allowing Miami-Dade to “centralize services in one of the fastest-growing regions of our county.”

Before the June 2024 approval, the Herald also reported on internal resistance to the deal from one of the proposed West Dade Government Center’s main tenants, the county’s Solid Waste Department. The department’s director at the time wrote a series of emails saying she preferred to lease cheaper office space elsewhere.

While the new retrofit estimate of $255 million for the FPL complex is more than three times higher than the administration’s original estimate, the revised figure doesn’t include a planned parking garage. Instead, Edwards said the original $22 million cost to add a garage is being offloaded into a residential development tower that’s also planned for the site.

A major tenant for the planned complex is already rethinking the deal because of concerns about parking.

The county’s Property Appraiser’s Office was expected to have the third-largest footprint of office space in the West Dade complex, behind Water and Sewer and Regulatory and Economic Resources. While those two departments are controlled by Levine Cava, the Property Appraiser’s Office is an independent agency led by an elected official, Property Appraiser Tomás Regalado, who has the authority to say no to the move at any time.

Regalado now says he’s not convinced he wants his office to move from downtown Miami, where transit options allow many of his employees to leave their cars at home.

“When I got here, I was told that [building in West Dade] was going to be our new home,” Regalado told the Herald. “I asked to take a tour. What I saw I did not like.”

He said he’s shared his concerns about staff and customer parking with Levine Cava. “She said they’re talking to developers to try to build a building with parking. But that hasn’t come through yet.”

Will a new housing complex help pay for a West Dade government center?

There is a chance real estate profits could offset the soaring construction costs for the West Dade Government Center. Edwards said a developer has submitted a proposal to build a workforce housing complex on part of the campus, with parking on the ground floors for the county offices. Miami-Dade would earn revenue from the developer, but Edwards said she didn’t have an estimate on how much that might be.

The Savills $438 million estimate for the total project cost includes the original $183 million land purchase, plus the $255 million renovation expense. The new price is higher than the $323 million the administration said in 2024 it would cost to buy vacant land and build a government center from scratch.

Faced with the higher costs now anticipated for the project, the mayor’s administration first plans to ask county commissioners for an additional $71 million to cover renovation costs, according to Edwards, chief administrative officer under Levine Cava. She couldn’t say when the administration will ask commissioners to decide on the full cost of a building renovation, but Edwards emphasized the Levine Cava administration has not accepted that the total renovation cost will be as much as Savills says it will, adding that the county might open the facility in phases to save money. She did acknowledge that the scope of the renovation job is far higher than what was first presented to commissioners.

Part of that, she said, was the administration deciding that it’s better to gut the building with lasting improvements than do a cheaper rehab effort that would require more spending in years to come.

“Once we got into the building — and we ascertained what was in the county’s interests long-term, we determined there were things we wanted to fix. And we would be better off long-term making those investments,” Edwards said. “We learned. Now we’re course correcting. Now we’re seeking permission for the course correction.”