Lone bidder in Byron Carlyle redevelopment negotiates with Miami Beach to build higher
With just one bidder still on board to redevelop the Byron Carlyle Theater in Miami Beach, the property development team involved in negotiations with the city has used the bargaining period to request a height increase and double the residential units.
Under the proposal, from the firms Menin Hospitality and KGTC, the iconic 52-year-old theater would be torn down and replaced with a residential tower named The Byron, which would be no taller than 165 feet and contain 228 rent-controlled apartment units, said KGTC project developer Matis Cohen. The group’s initial proposal was for an 85-foot tower with 114 units.
The theater is located at 500 71st Street.
Instead of paying the city to lease the public land, the developers intend to build the city a new 10,000-square-foot cultural arts center and offer workforce housing as a public benefit, Cohen said. Miami-Dade would hold a lottery to select the building’s tenants, he said.
“Because it is public land the base of the proposal has to be for public benefit,” Cohen said. “By definition, workforce housing is a public benefit.”
There are currently no workforce housing units in Miami Beach, but the city is negotiating a public-private housing development in Collins Park that would add 80 units. There are 4,795 affordable housing units citywide.
The project aligns with the city’s vision to redevelop 71st Street, considered North Beach’s new main street. A build-out of the so-called “Town Center” area was approved in 2017 by voters, who authorized increases in building size there.
The proposed building would include ground-level local retail, co-working spaces for artists and an open-space plaza. The developers have proposed to expand the footprint of the cultural center to 12,500 square feet as part of the plan to build taller, Cohen said.
“We’re still working on variations, but the idea is to give the city their own building for the cultural center,” Cohen said. “This multiplex type of structure would give the city the ability to use it as theater and movie theater.”
The proposal is one of two the city received after putting the project out to bid in 2019, but it was not the city’s first choice.
Top-ranked Pacific Star Capital, which proposed to build a hotel and a cultural center double the size of the current proposal, withdrew its bid during a July 9 meeting with city staff. Building a 10,000-square-foot “cultural component” was the minimum requirement in the city’s request for proposals. Pacific Star had also proposed a one-time lease payment of $8,797,088. The market value of the property, which includes an adjacent parking lot, is $8,514,746, according to the city.
Critics of the proposal, including North Beach residents who have signed a petition demanding the city deny the deal, see the planned residential building as just one more “high rise” in the city. Someone making $89,600 — or 140% of the median income in Miami-Dade — is eligible for rent-controlled housing. Even at the lowest allowed income level of $38,400, or 60% of the median income, a studio apartment would cost $960, according to rent limits published by the Florida Housing Finance Corporation.
The Byron would have a mix of studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom units, according to the proposal.
“The terms are very stringent,” Cohen said. “I’m providing subsidized housing. Every city in the country provides a developer incentives to do that by providing the land, providing equity or providing financing.”
Miami Beach’s Finance and Economic Resiliency Committee, chaired by Commissioner Ricky Arriola, is expected to review the city’s negotiated term sheet during its Sept. 18 meeting. Passage of the deal requires six of the City Commission’s seven members to vote in favor of the project, due to a city law governing long-term leases.
The theater, purchased by the city in 2001 for $1.7 million, had been run by the nonprofit O Cinema since 2014 before the city vacated the property in 2019 at the end of the operator’s lease. The city, which subsidized the operation of its theater, deemed the building uninhabitable due to a “lack of safety in the electrical wiring that supplies the building,” a city spokeswoman said.
“The city owes it to residents to use that space for a public purpose,” said North Beach resident and former City Commissioner Nancy Liebman. “I understand it’s in very bad condition, that can be fixed.”
The city estimates it would cost about $3.2 million to bring the building back online, but Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber said the decline of the movie theater business makes finding an investor difficult.
“The market governs us to a certain extent,” he said. “If we can get an activated theater space of that size I think it would be a wonderful amenity for the community.”
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