Selling Miami’s future | Mika Mattingly | Colliers International Urban Core Division | Page 5

Brightline's MiamiCentral transit hub will include Monger by the Voltaggio Brothers as part of its 50,000-square-foot Central Fare.

“It’s like Cinderella who needs a dress.
Once you put the dress on Cinderella, she’s
not Cinderella anymore,” he said.
Mana made a fortune in the moving
business in New York before buying the
former National Biscuit Co. headquarters
in New York’s Meatpacking District. He
set up a photography studio that helped
attract the fashion industry, and the oncedecaying area is now one of Manhattan’s
trendiest neighborhoods.
Mana’s approach has some similarities
to what Barlington Group has done in Little
Havana, which was covered in the August
issue of SFBW.
Barlington managing principal Bill
Fuller cut a deal with Mana a few years
ago for a downtown property and says he
likes Mana’s idea of “buying en masse and
really curating an entire neighborhood like
a village. It takes those passion projects. It
takes a series of them.”
AN AREA WITH
UNIQUE CHARACTER
Akerman law firm managing partner
Neisen O. Kasdin, the former mayor of
Miami Beach, a governor of the Urban
Land Institute and vice chairman of the
Downtown Development Association,
said the potential of the historic area was
apparent when the 2009 downtown master
plan was produced.
“One of the things we said about Flagler

The historic Walgreen Building, home to La Epoca, is up for sale

Street is that its historic architecture was
one of the things that gave the street its
unique character and could be to Flagler
Street like Lincoln Road [was to] Miami
Beach in the 1990s,” Kasdin says.
He expects interest in the area to
increase when the streetscape project is
done and investors divulge more details of
their plans.
There could be some new projects
because the zoning for downtown allows
virtually unlimited heights and dense uses,
Kasdin says.
There is not an abundance of listings for

the historic area on Loopnet.com, which
is used by commercial brokers. Besides
Mattingly’s listing for the Walgreen’s
building, the only other major property
listed was 25 W. Flagler St., the home
for City National Bank’s operational
headquarters.
FLAGLER PAST AND PRESENT
The Flagler name has both historical and
current relevance to the street.
Henry Flagler’s railroad fueled the
original Miami boom in 1896 when his
railroad reached the city. For decades,
www.sfbwmag.com • DECEMBER 2016

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