Plans for superyacht dock in Miami Beach sunk over permit fraud allegations
It’s back to square one for a Miami Beach homeowner hoping to park his 88-foot superyacht at his waterfront home.
On Wednesday, Miami-Dade’s Environmental Quality Control Board yanked Roland Peralta’s county permit for his already constructed new dock and told him to start again — ideally, with the proper permissions from his next door neighbors.
All sides appear thrilled with the decision.
READ MORE: On one of Miami Beach’s richest streets, neighbors are clashing over a superyacht
The showdown over a new, larger dock on North Bay Road, an exclusive stretch of Miami Beach real estate also known as “billionaire’s row,” pitted Peralta, co-founder of hair growth supplement company Nutrafol, against his neighbors, pop icon Shakira and Randy Gelber, chief financial officer of Epic Games, creator of the video game sensation Fortnite.
Peralta’s superyacht — a term for yachts bigger than 80 feet but smaller than 200 feet (a yacht larger than 200 feet is called a megayacht) — is too big for the dock already in place at his home. He obtained a permit from Miami-Dade County earlier this year to build a horizontal dock that juts out from his property and completed construction in just a few months.
The problem, the EQCB board heard Tuesday, is that two of the letters of consent he provided for the permit had issues.
Shakira and Gelber both sued over what they contend was fraud. In an interrogatory, the notary who notarized both of their letters of consent admitted she was not present for either notarization and that she improperly backdated them both.
Both sides also argued that the wrong people signed the letters of consent. In Gelber’s case, it was signed by the previous homeowner, who immediately revoked her consent the next day, saying she was too high on the marijuana gummy she took for her pains to properly consent. Shakira’s team argued that the letter was signed by a member of her team in California and that the entertainer was not properly notified.
Linda Rinaldi, who identified herself as a personal representative for Shakira at the hearing, said Peralta could have informed Shakira about the new dock in a number of ways besides reaching out to a part-time “house staff member who didn’t speak English.”
“He has her number. He could have called her,” she said.
Dan Gelber, the lawyer who represented Randy Gelber (no relation), called the notary issue “downright sinister” and urged the EQCB board to revoke the permit.
“If you find a group of kids cheating, you don’t just say keep the grade,” he said.
The board agreed. They found that because of the alleged fraud in obtaining the letters of consent, the neighbors weren’t able to properly contest the permit with the county and that it was therefore improperly given.
Immediately after the decision, Randy Gelber, his wife and children and the various representatives for Shakira all celebrated with hugs and sighs of relief.
The attorney representing Peralta, Robert Zarco, was equally delighted.
“My client and I are very happy the EQCB got it right by requiring that we start from scratch without having to remove the dock,” he said.
The next step is to go back and re-apply for a permit, now that this one has been revoked. Zarco said this renders the two lawsuits against the notary, also his client, moot.
“We’re starting from scratch, there’s no consent issue, there’s no notary issue,” he said. “My guess is that [the county] is going to go through the same process and come to the same result.”
By that, he means another issued permit from Miami-Dade, which is still possible even without permission from neighbors. In that case, the county says, the question goes to the state of Florida, which has the power to approve a dock like this without explicit consent from the neighbors.
“I don’t think the neighbors will ever give my client consent,” Zarco told the EQCB board.
