Miami Beach tells developer who hired Miami mayor to stop unpermitted construction
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The city of Miami Beach has issued a violation for unpermitted construction and ordered work to stop immediately on a project by Rishi Kapoor, a developer under scrutiny for hiring Miami Mayor Francis Suarez as a consultant and whose business dealings are the subject of multiple investigations.
The stop-work order was posted one day after the Miami Herald inquired about apparent construction underway at the site, including parts of the foundation and columns at Kapoor’s planned six-story co-living and co-working project at 1234 and 1260 Washington Ave.
Kapoor’s firm, URBIN Miami Beach, has applied for but not yet obtained a building permit for the project. Last month, the Miami Beach City Commission granted an extension to May 2024 to get the permit and also approved a new ordinance to allow a possible future Kapoor co-living project on Washington Avenue near 15th Street.
Kapoor, who has made substantial campaign contributions to multiple Miami Beach elected officials, got the go-ahead late last year to demolish a one-story building that stood at the 1260 Washington site. The developer also received a state permit earlier this year to construct drainage wells.
But the city has not approved any other construction there, Miami Beach spokesperson Melissa Berthier said. Kapoor’s firm applied for a building permit in May 2021.
“Other than the demolition work associated with the demolition permit, they are not authorized to do any other work — until the building permit is issued,” Berthier said.
Contractor says construction began
Berthier said the project’s general contractor, Winmar Construction, acknowledged to city officials that “foundation work” was performed earlier this year. She said the city is giving the contractor until Friday to submit final plans for review, “or they will be referred to the State’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation.”
Representatives for Kapoor could not be reached for comment.
Winmar Construction representatives also could not immediately be reached, nor could representatives of MTCI, a private inspection company that was hired to oversee construction.
Construction at the site appears to have halted in recent weeks. Workers at several nearby businesses told the Herald last week that they had seen a flurry of construction activity earlier this year, but it seemed to stop abruptly a few weeks ago.
It wasn’t immediately clear why the unpermitted work wasn’t flagged sooner. City code officers had been at the site as recently as April, records show, when a violation was issued for failure to install a concrete foundation beneath a chain-link fence.
Berthier, the city spokesperson, said the private provider, MTCI, is responsible for plan reviews and inspections. Florida law allows developers to utilize private providers to oversee and inspect construction projects, though those providers are supposed to submit reports to city building officials.
Mounting problems for Kapoor
Several contractors for Kapoor, including Winmar and an architecture firm on the Miami Beach project, Touzet Studio, have filed liens against entities tied to Kapoor this month alleging they haven’t been paid in full.
Kapoor’s company also owes nearly $215,000 in property taxes at the site, according to Miami-Dade County records.
Earlier this month, the Herald reported that the FBI and Securities and Exchange Commission had opened parallel investigations into Kapoor’s business dealings in South Florida, focusing separately on his hiring of Suarez as a consultant on local projects and his raising of funds from investors.
Location Ventures closed on the South Beach site for $20 million in 2021 and got approvals to renovate an existing office building at 1234 Washington Ave. and knock down the existing structure next door. Last year, the firm announced all 69 residential units in the planned building had been sold.
The project is also planned to include ground-floor retail and co-working space. The small size of its proposed units — studios at 275 square feet — has been controversial among elected officials, but Kapoor and his team have sold the project as a boon for the neighborhood.
“It is very important that the city start diversifying its tax base away from hospitality-driven revenues and towards the more mixed-use projects like this one,” Michael Larkin, an attorney for Kapoor, told the Miami Beach Planning Board in June 2020.
In October 2021, Suarez was pictured speaking and posing with Kapoor at an event in South Beach marking the beginning of condo sales.
This past November, Location Ventures held a groundbreaking ceremony at the site with guests including Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber.
“This property will infuse living, working and wellness into a singular location, while contributing to the quickly evolving, iconic Washington Avenue district,” Kapoor said at the time, according to Florida YIMBY. “We selected this site because it represents our brand ethos to increase accessibility and mobility in urban cores.”
Kapoor is pursuing several projects in Miami Beach, in addition to other co-living endeavors in Miami and Coral Gables. Location Ventures submitted an unsolicited bid last year to redevelop a city-owned parking lot at 13th Street and Collins Avenue into a parking garage, office and retail building.
In March, an entity connected to the firm contributed $50,000 to a political group supporting Michael Gongora, a candidate for Miami Beach mayor.
Entities tied to Kapoor also gave $10,000 apiece to political committees backing Miami Beach candidates in a special election late last year.
Earlier in 2022, the city removed Kapoor’s name from a list of prohibited donors after he made donations totaling $3,000 to Gelber’s re-election campaign. City officials said Kapoor had been “erroneously” added to the prohibited list because he wasn’t actively pursuing a development agreement, a requirement for developers to be placed on the list.
Miami Herald staff writers Tess Riski, Sarah Blaskey and Joey Flechas contributed to this report.
