Miami Waterfront Site Where a Massive Casino Was Once Planned Hits the Market for $1 Billion

A prime location in downtown Miami that was once expected to house a massive casino is for sale with a price tag of more than $1 billion, making it one of the most valuable and largest U.S. waterfront properties on the market in a major city.

Malaysian casino owner and developer Genting Group has listed 15.5 acres on the water at 1431 N. Bayshore Drive that fronts Biscayne Bay next to the causeway that connects with south Miami Beach. The property is in downtown Miami’s arts and entertainment district.

The land was once home to the headquarters of the Miami Herald. The newspaper sold the property in 2011 for $236 million to Genting, which proposed building a $3.8 billion casino resort named Resorts World Miami. Genting never could secure a gambling permit for the project. Genting didn’t respond to inquiries for comment on the listing.

Genting’s Miami property now is one of the most valuable for sale in the United States with nothing comparable in markets the size of Miami, Michael Fay, the Miami-based chairman of Avison Young’s capital markets executive committee who is handling the listing, told CoStar News.

The property is primed for mixed-use development and is located next to the Metromover, an automated mass transit system. Zoning changes last year in Miami allowed more destiny next to transit lines to encourage development.

South Florida has been luring a plethora of major financial companies over the past couple of years, including Citadel, Goldman Sachs, Elliott Management, Icahn Enterprises and BlackRock, that have all set up corporate offices in the area.

In August, hedge fund Citadel paid $363 million for a 2.5-acre prime vacant piece of waterfront property in Miami’s financial district known as Brickell where the company plans to build a new headquarters and bought other properties across the street. The site is about 2.5 miles down the waterfront from Genting’s property.

Brickell in the southern part of downtown has a more corporate and modern atmosphere than on the northern side of the Miami River that has been slower to redevelop. Genting’s property is on the northern side, which is home to mostly theaters, museums, government buildings, courthouses and older officer towers. Brickell has more apartment towers, restaurants and entertainment hot spots in the mix.

Genting’s property has drawn a lot of interest from investors in places such as Canada, the United Arab Emirates and England as well as from the U.S., Fay said.

The property has the potential for more than 8,000 multifamily units. Miami’s apartment market has been booming during the pandemic with rent growth among the best in the country. In downtown, rent growth has run as high as 18.5% annually in the first quarter, a touch higher than the metropolitan-area’s average, according to CoStar data. It has cooled to 6.8% but still double historical averages.

Apartment vacancy has dropped to 4.7% but construction could change that. Half of the Miami-area’s apartment construction is downtown with 14,238 units underway. That is the equivalent of 51% of existing units.

On the office side, CoStar data shows 1.5 million square feet under construction as downtown vacancy stands at about 15.4% vacancy. But rents have been rising and are up 8% annually through this quarter, a pace last appearing six years ago.

Retail real estate is a bit of a different picture. Vacancy in the northern part of downtown is above 16% yet there has been rent growth. It’s at 3.6% now, which is 3.2 percentage points lower than in the second quarter.

Genting plans to maintain its ownership of 10 acres in downtown Miami west of Biscayne Boulevard. That land is home to the Hilton Downtown Miami hotel, which Genting bought the same year it bought the land to develop the casino.

At the time, it was the Omni Center and included an office building and retail. The retail portion was demolished. Genting is “accelerating the process of outlining a project” for that acreage, Robert DeSalvio, president of Genting Americas, said in the announcement of the land being for sale.

Genting, one of the largest resort and entertainment and gaming corporations in the world, is devoting resources to bringing a full commercial casino to its New York City property in Queens and expanding its holdings in Las Vegas. The company opened the $4.3 billion Resorts World Las Vegas last year.

The company also is competing with others for the rights to build another casino in New York City. Competitors include Related Cos., lead developer of Manhattan’s Hudson Yards, has teamed up with Wynn Resorts to put a casino on an undeveloped site at Hudson Yards, and SL Green teamed up with Caesars Entertainment for a casino at Times Square.

Avison Young’s Fay, John K. Crotty, David Duckworth and Brian C. de la Fé are marketing the 15.5 acres on Biscayne Bay for sale for Genting.