The Battle for White House Inn Scratches the Surface

If Related Group gets its way, North Miami’s Biscayne Bay frontage is in for a seismic change.

Related has submitted plans for Icon Residences, a 15-story, $150-million project on the one-acre plot of land at 2305 NE 123 St., now occupied by the two-story White House Inn, built in 1969, closed in 2014, and now shuttered and fenced. The plans call for 54 condos averaging an eye-popping $4.6 million each right at the entrance to the Shepard Broad Causeway, with views across Biscayne Bay to the towers of Sunny Isles Beach to the northeast and due east across Bay Harbor Islands to Bal Harbour – as well as the yards and windows of the single-family homes of Keystone Point just north across the canal.

That’s just one reason not all the neighbors are pleased.

Keystone’s frustrations exploded May 19 at a packed community meeting at the newly opened Wildcat Center at 1600 NE 126th St., hosted by the Keystone Homeowners Association, which represents the neighborhood of more than 900 homes.

Related is asking the city to change the height limit for development on the site from the current 35 feet to 169 feet – or the exact height of the Majorca Bay tower at 11930 N Bayshore Dr., just four blocks south. With the 15-foot mechanical plant near the rooftop swimming pool, the total height of Icon Residences would be 184 feet.

And there is more.

Related and other entities are contemplating or planning a potential skyline of buildings of similar height between the White House Inn site and Majorca Bay. Under North Miami’s 2017 Comprehensive Plan, development at the White House Inn site is now limited to 35 feet, and the bayfront area to the south is permitted to 115 feet.

Knowing he was playing to a tough crowd, Pedro Gassant, a Holland & Knight partner representing Related, made his best case – that the Icon project would eliminate the vagrancy and illicit dealings currently plaguing the site and bring in $1.7 million tax revenue for the cash-strapped city in the first year, and $45 million over 20 years.

“We want to provide for the entrance into the city from Bal Harbour to be as good as the communities, as the people and as the elected officials in this city, and we think that the redevelopment of this property can do that,” said Gassant, who was greeted with derisive laughter from the audience when he later asserted that a traffic study foresaw no negative impact from the project on the area.

One of the residents present was Eric Riel, an urban planner and 20-year resident who lives 500 feet catty-corner to the north from the site across a small bridge.

“I’m not against development. I’d like to see this site developed, if it is compatible with the properties next door,” said Riel. But “putting a 184-foot building next to single-family homes is just not compatible. It’s just going to degrade the quality of life.”

Neighbors object to the outsized scale and lack of privacy a high-rise looking right into their homes would create.

The site plan and zoning change for the project are scheduled to be presented before the North Miami Planning Commission June 7 at 7 p.m., and tentatively before the North Miami City Council June 28 at 7 p.m., at North Miami City Hall, located at 776 NE 125 St.

Neighborhood at Odds

This is not the first time Keystone residents have jousted over the White House Inn property. In 2016, the Murgado Group, which owns Ocean Cadillac, bought the property for $7.8 million then tried and failed to get a seven-story car dealership at the site to relieve its cramped quarters in Bay Harbor Islands. Ocean Cadillac instead moved to 4.75 acres near I-95 and 183rd Street in 2019. In November 2021, Murgado sold the site for $11 million to Related and Israeli tech billionaire and real estate investor Teddy Sagi, who Related says is a passive investor.

Related expects to have better luck, and has girded for battle with a community public relations strategy as elaborate as any in North Miami’s history.

And its Icon Residences project isn’t the only big thing in the bayside neighborhood.

Less than half a mile to the south, Raimundo Onetto’s Alta Developers bought Mid Bay Club Apartments at 11950 N Bayshore Dr. for $14 million and is preparing to demolish the two-story structure to build a boutique condominium building.

Right next door at 12000 Bayshore Dr., Related representatives are buying out condos in Mariner’s Bay, a 1981 four-story structure along a full block with boat slips. It has secured 32 of the 46 units already, and is closing in on more, approaching the 37 it needs for the condo association to be dissolved, making way for development there that will transform 800 feet of bayfront.

Looking to sway votes and public opinion to its side, Related has conducted an artful community pincer movement. It submitted architects’ renderings and site plans before launching strategic community meetings with free food in neighborhoods well to the west, petition drives for the project, and a website with a panorama rendering and one option offered: “Support the project.”

In executing this strategy, Related has also been talking up the project with each of the five city councilmembers, as the site plan approval and zoning change will require a supermajority of four of the five members.

Hard Sell

Related has retained high-powered strategists, lobbyists and lawyers to further its agenda. Former North Miami Mayor Andre Pierre, a Sans Souci resident who recently phased out his immigration law practice for full-time government consulting, has worked the strategy. Gassant is the project’s public face. And Related’s community meetings have been moderated by no less than the city’s former longtime planning commission chair, Kevin Seifried.

“We are here to be good neighbors,” Gassant has said.

Opposition to the project is not uniform, and some of the debate came through at the May 12 meeting of the Sans Souci Voluntary Gates Homeowners Association, where Keystone Homeowners Association President Karen DeLeon squared off with Sans Souci President Hal Richman.

“This is 184 feet of building next to a single-family home, you guys ... A good neighbor does not build 184 feet next to homes anywhere in this city,” said DeLeon.

“You’ve got to be burying your head in the sand if you believe this neighborhood won’t have high-rises,” retorted Richman.

District One term-limited councilmember Scott Galvin – who has served on the council since 1999– represents most of Keystone and will soon represent all of it. His term expires next year, and he said he would vote “no,” although his answer sounded pro forma, as if he suspects that Related already has its four votes secured.

“Keystone is against what’s being proposed. Keystone is the girl that’s brought me to the dance floor for the last quarter-century and I’m not kicking her teeth in on the way out the door. Related Group is doing a masterful job of community PR, and they’re going to have to get their four votes without me, little by little,” Galvin said.

The Last Development Frontier?

Onetime Planning Commissioner Bill Prevatel was part of the group that sold the Mid Bay Club in February. For years, he has strenuously advocated for high-rise, high-density development to fatten the city’s tax base and fill its empty coffers.

Prevatel champions turning the one-acre White House Inn into parkland, in exchange for a massive mixed-use project merging the Mid Bay and Mariner’s Cove projects.

“We might be talking 40 or 50 floors, but we wouldn’t be changing density. The disruption to the community would be less,” he said.

Riel cites a litany of other complications: difficult ingress and egress immediately next to the busy causeway and short turn distance between 123rd Street and the bridge to Keystone; the plans to economize space through tandem or mechanical lift parking, either of which require an operator or valet to work; and the immediate proximity to the causeway, where the $2 toll goes to Bay Harbour Islands’ treasury. Related plans to elevate the property as required, but would accommodate parking by digging eight feet next to the bay for parking spaces 3-5 feet below the water table.

Galvin tempers his opposition to the project with his overall belief that the city is past due for redevelopment. In recent years, he has only grown more fervent in envisioning and reimagining North Miami as developers race to build along 123rd and 125th streets, near the rail line west of Biscayne Boulevard with the planned transit stations at 123rd and 151st streets, and through the vast areas of Solé Mia east of Biscayne, the former Johnson & Wales campus west of Biscayne, and a reimagined industrial area between Biscayne and West Dixie Highway on the city’s northern end.

“We’ve got to stop chasing ghosts,” said Galvin. “The city looks exactly the same as it did 50 years ago when I was a little boy. After 50 years of being untouched, we’re left as the last uncharted territory for development ... Related has done a masterful job of organizing the votes.”

Biscayne Times staff writer Samantha Morell contributed to this story.