Miami Heat Legend, Magellan Move Forward On 200-Unit Development
A partnership between Magellan Housing and recently retired Miami Heat star Udonis Haslem completed the acquisition of a North Miami site where it is planning a 200-unit affordable housing development.
Coral Gables-based Magellan and a company controlled by Haslem paid the city of North Miami $1.5M to acquire a 6.3-acre brownfield site at 13780 Northeast Fifth Ave. where the partnership is planning 174 apartments and 26 townhomes.
The eight-story apartment building called Catherine Flon Estates would be rented to tenants earning no more than 60% of the area median income, Magellan principal Nick Inamdar said in an email. As of May, 60% AMI was $43K for a single person. The 26 townhomes would be available for sale to residents earning 120% or less of AMI, or $124K for a family of four.
North Miami issued a request for proposals for a housing development on the site in December 2018, and the developer’s plans were brought before the North Miami City Council in 2019. The redevelopment agreement was finalized on July 14.
The property is the former site of the Rucks Park Wastewater Treatment Plant and will require environmental remediation to remove arsenic, ammonia and other hazards before construction can begin.
The partnership plans to secure 4% Low-Income Housing Tax Credits from the state’s housing authority to offset development costs, Inamdar said. In its 2019 proposal, the developer also said a “significant portion of the financing of any project may come from local, state, or federal resources that may subsidize the project in the range of 40-90% of eligible costs.”
Haslem is attached to the project through Haslem Housing Venture, which he established in 2017. It is the second affordable housing project in partnership with Magellan for the longtime Heat forward, who won three NBA championships with the team.
The two companies are working with North Carolina-based Greystone Affordable Development and nonprofit Mount Zion Housing Development to develop the 120-unit Wynwood Works on a half-acre site at 2035-2043 North Miami Ave. The developers secured the site for no cost from Miami’s Omni Community Redevelopment Agency in June.
The majority of the apartments in the 12-story Wynwood Works will be available to tenants making 60% or less of AMI, while the other units will go to tenants making between 33% and 80% of AMI. It is being financed through a $32M bond from the Housing Finance Authority of Miami-Dade County, $9.9M from Miami’s community redevelopment agency and $3.5M from both the city of Miami and the Wynwood Business Improvement District, The Real Deal reported.
Haslem isn’t the only former Heat player to work on affordable housing development in Miami, which by some measures is at the heart of the state’s affordable housing crisis. Alonzo Mourning, a Heat executive who spent the majority of his career with the team before retiring in 2008, created AM Affordable Housing in 2015 in partnership with Matthew Rieger, the CEO of multifamily developer Housing Trust Group.
AM Affordable Housing completed its first project in 2016, an 84-unit development in Overtown called Courtside Family Apartments. The partnership has since delivered a half-dozen developments and broke ground in October on the 120-unit Tucker Tower in West Perrine that will provide affordable housing to seniors.
Mourning told Bisnow in January that the developers were also preparing to break ground on the second of three phases at the Courtside Family Apartments this year.
"I just want to come in and help the community,” Mourning said. “That's all we want to do. We don’t want to make a lot of money off of these projects.”
