Lender Wins Second Auction For Miami Skyscraper Site With $95M Bid
The lender to a fully entitled redevelopment site won a bankruptcy auction for the property for a second time — this time for $18M more than its initial winning bid, which was voided by a judge.
The auction redo for 340 Biscayne Blvd. was held Wednesday afternoon and ended after just 10 minutes of bidding between two parties. The lender, Cirrus Real Estate Partners, made the opening $77M credit bid and traded off with an unknown party in $5M increments before a “congratulations” was called out when the price reached $95M.
Officials with Cirrus didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Concierge Auctions led the auction, and Gabriel Flores with One Commercial, a subsidiary of One Sotheby's International Realty, was the listing agent.
“We are pleased that we were able to deliver a positive outcome for our client," Concierge Auctions CEO and co-founder Chad Roffers said in a statement.
The site today is occupied by the Holiday Inn Port of Miami-Downtown, built in 1950, but it is fully entitled for 374 residential units, 120 hotel rooms, commercial and office space, and 500 parking spaces. The 82-story, nearly 1M SF project has been dubbed Regalia on the Bay.
The 100-room Holiday Inn is expected to close within 45 days of the sale being finalized, according to a layoff notice reported this week by the South Florida Business Journal. Sixty-six hotel employees are expected to lose their jobs.
Entities affiliated with Brazilian investor and developer Gilberto Bomeny purchased the hotel in 2015 for $65M, according to public records. The site is directly north of the under-construction Waldorf Astoria Hotel & Residences Miami, set to be Florida's tallest building.
Cirrus provided a $70M loan to Bomeny in 2023, renewing a $62.6M loan and tacking on new debt of $7.4M, The Real Deal reported. But Bomeny defaulted, and the lender issued a UCC notice for a foreclosure auction for BH Downtown Miami LLC, the entity that owns 340 Biscayne Owner LLC, both of which are affiliated with Bomeny.
To stave off the foreclosure, Bomeny placed two LLCs into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection at the end of 2024. A bankruptcy judge approved a public sale of the property to satisfy the loan, and an auction was scheduled for Dec. 17 with a $175M listing price.
Cirrus won that sale with a $77M credit bid, but an attorney for the bankrupt entities objected to the process, arguing that technical difficulties and a miscommunication on when the auction started kept bidders from entering the auction, the South Florida Business Journal reported. There were no other bids.
At a hearing on Dec. 31, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Laurel Isicoff voided the results of that sale and ordered another auction to be held, requiring Concierge Auctions to field calls from bidders that needed help registering, the SFBJ reported.
Cirrus' $95M purchase will go before Isicoff for approval at a hearing on Feb. 11, a representative for Concierge Auctions said.
