Foreclosure Averted For Downtown Miami Building With $27M Sale
New York developer Yair Levy has given up on plans to own a mecca for Miami’s jewelers.
The 225K SF retail and office building at 1 NE First St., which Levy rebranded as the Time Century Jewelry Center and poured millions of dollars into as part of a major renovation, sold for $27.5M on Jan. 9, less than a week before it was slated for a foreclosure auction, the South Florida Business Journal reported.
The buyer is a joint venture of Miami-based Elysee Investments, which purchased a 56.7% stake in the property; Avi Dishi, Elysee’s president, who acquired 28.3% of the property; and New York-based Pan Am Equities, which bought the remaining 15%, according to the SFBJ.
City National Bank of Florida moved to foreclose on the property in September, alleging that the building’s owners had failed to repay $26M in principal on a construction loan issued in 2021 for a $50M gut renovation that remains unfinished.
After the suit was filed, a spokesperson for Levy’s investment firm, Time Century Holdings, told Bisnow that the developer was “in the process of addressing and resolving all issues and is looking forward to the continued development of the Time Century Jewelry Center.”
Elysee Investments and a representative for Levy didn’t respond to Bisnow’s request for comment Tuesday.
Time Century used an affiliate called TC Metro Mall Investments to pay $14.8M for an 80% stake in the property in 2018 when it was known as the Metro Mall. The 97-year-old building is within a four-block span of jewelry retailers in Downtown Miami and adjacent to the Seybold Building, a historic property built in 1921 that hosts jewelers and anchors the district.
Levy’s plan to renovate the building as the gem of Miami’s jewelry district was his first entry into South Florida and came after the developer was banned in 2011 from selling co-ops and condos by the New York Supreme Court for allegedly defrauding buyers.
Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Gina Beovides handled the foreclosure suit, awarding City National Bank a partial judgment in December and setting a January date for the courthouse auction that was later canceled after the bank said in a filing that it was close to reaching an agreement with Levy, The Real Deal reported.
New York-based CapMoon Cos. was preparing to buy the defaulted loan, but the Elysee and Pan Am partnership showed up at the eleventh hour with an offer to purchase the property, a source told TRD.
Hyad Investments LLC, an entity tied to the new owners, took over the City National Bank mortgage as part of the sale and restated it at $20M, the SFBJ reported.
The joint venture is moving to finish the extensive renovations at the property and hopes to open its doors to tenants within six months. The foreclosure suit lists three liens against the property from construction contractors, but Elysee co-owner Erik Yehezkel told TRD the firm has been working with the general contractors to resume construction.
A spokesperson for the property told The New York Times in a January 2023 profile of the building that Time Century had secured more than 60 tenants for the property during the renovation.
Yehezkel told TRD the majority of tenants have kept their leases despite years of delays, adding the joint venture is marketing the remaining space.
