James Bleyer: Florida Pension Fund Raid Benefits Bush Allies. The Jorge Perez Money Machine ... by gimleteye

Civic journalist Jim Bleyer uncovers a terrific story, involving legal money laundering that allowed GOP candidate Jeb Bush, polling in the low single digits, to outraise every other Republican candidate. So far, the Bush war chest tops $155 million, nearly twice that of his nearest Republican rival.

One of the billionaires greasing the Bush single digit campaign: Miami developer and Democrat, Jorge Perez.

Bleyer links two important real estate deals in Tampa, Florida. One involves a prominent conservative newspaper whose property was purchased at a highly inflated price by Perez, after another transaction in which the state of Florida paid a highly inflated price for a low occupancy rate Tampa project. For Miami readers, it is redolent of the Perez real estate flip that ultimately linked to the naming of Miami's signature contemporary art museum for Perez.

That transaction first involved a real estate flip of property that Perez and partners had purchased adjacent to the Miami Herald, re-consolidated soon thereafter by a Malaysian Chinese gambling billionaire, accruing first to the the benefit of shareholders and top executives of the Herald and McClatchy, whose personal profit soared when insiders purchased the Herald land at a gargantuan price, and then off-loaded again to another prominent insider in Miami.

The money trails involving Perez transactions in Miami and in Tampa are circumstantial, and the only visible connections are through public records of property transaction. In its simplest form, the Bleyer report shows how overpriced transactions wash profits -- albeit in an indirect flow -- from very wealthy individuals in property development industries to political favorites.

We have speculated here, at Eye On Miami, that Perez made a big and early bet that Bush would be the Republican nominee, despite the fact he supported the Clintons in the past. We also speculated that what Perez wants is an inside-track to redevelopment rights in Cuba once the embargo is lifted. It makes sense that Perez would cross the political boundary to support Bush.

Notwithstanding public comments that Perez gave to Jeb! because he respects the work Bush did as governor, he (Perez) knows perfectly well the rules of the Bush rain-making machinery, involving infrastructure, land, and opportunity: financial rewards align with those who have been loyalists.

What is also interesting in the Bleyer report: confirmation how the Rick Scott administration -- initially at odds with Jeb Bush -- folded into the Bush line

A lot has changed, though, to the best laid plans of the Republican hierarchy since 2014, the time frame of the deals Bleyer covers. For one, Rick Scott has made strong overtures to the insurgent Trump campaign. Second, all those big funders who betted so strongly on Jeb Bush have hedged their bets with other candidates.

Perez, who contributed to Democrats in the past, looks to have made a bad bet on Bush. In 2010, Bloomberg found someone to praise Jorge Perez rescue from the financial dead: "“Banks have great respect for him and banks need him,” said Donald Trump, the New York celebrity developer who licensed his name to Perez for the Trump Hollywood. “They’ll make a deal with Jorge whereas they wouldn’t make a deal with other people."

Florida Pension Fund Raid Benefits Bush Allies
1/28/2016
from the blog, Floridiocy

Florida's public pension fund bailed out two prominent Miami developers linked to former governor and presidential hopeful Jeb Bush when it overpaid by tens of millions of dollars for an occupancy-challenged downtown Tampa apartment complex in February, 2014.

The $76.5 million purchase of the Pierhouse at Channelside was approved by the State Board of Administration and its trustees: Gov. Rick Scott, Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater, and Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Bicentennial Park to get Chicago's Millennium Park Sculpture? By Geniusofdespair

Millennium Park - Plensa Sculpture - photo by Geniusofdespair 

Artist Jaume Plensa

Jorge Perez has bought the massive head sculpture, Awilda, that was in Millennium Park in Chicago and wants to put it in Bicentennial Park, or as the Art Museum and (broke and begging for money) Science Museum like to call it: Museum Park. Jorge does not want to put the head in the sculpture garden. I expect he wants it at the entrance way to the park, next to the wastewater building (where they pump the poop for initial treatment). Get nose and ear plugs if you ever have the good fortune to be invited in.

Millennium will still have its bean. Why would they sell this sculpture that has been at the entrance of their park? Chicago doesn't need money...not like Flint...that has to get ready for at least a million lawsuit plaintiffs.

My source says they are removing the head at Millennium because it was a temporary installation. My guess originally was that Jorge Perez might be buying a similar version to this particular Chicago head, as the artist does have a body of work that looks pretty similar...well very, very similar. Anyway, I happen to like the sculpture, although there are a lot of these heads around the country. His last phase of sculptures -- lattice-alphabet people -- are everywhere. There is even one at Aventura Mall.  A few steps above Romero Britto to be sure.

"Semi Celebrities" Sightings in Wynwood. by Geniusofdespair

I was on NW 26th Street and NW 5th Avenue, on the way to Zach's Bakery.  Who do I run into doing his Real Estate shopping? None other than Jorge Perez. Of course I got it on my camera:

Jorge Perez looking over the hood, and Pinkie Girl (she talked like she was a real estate agent). What is he thinking? "All these one story buildings have to go?"

Here is where Art Patron/Developer Jorge Perez was going

Sideview of same building. It is Wynwood after all. I wonder what the meaning is of the Mural?  I wonder if it is forecasting its destruction?

Wynwood is such a hot spot I also ran into Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, head of the DNC, eating at Zach's Bakery.  Funny, I never saw her eating in her district, EVER. Actually, I never have seen her out and about campaigning in her district. Doesn't have to.

Debbie isn't a celebrity like "The Donald" -- no marshmallow hair or pastel pink tie but she is powerful presence in Democratic Circles.

Debbie was nice enough to pose for me. That suit, it is so...congressional looking?? She sure is buttoned up.

Speaking of "The Donald" he was in brain-dead Jacksonville on Saturday, where if you don't have a pick-up truck, you are nobody. Here is a photo that my niece sent. Sometimes his rallies have food, like "Have pancakes with the Donald." This one appears to be sans food. Foolish people, if they held out they could have gotten hamburgers or something.

Jorge Perez and Jeb Bush: The Sun Rises in Cuba ... by gimleteye

Mother Jones reported an interesting story on homegrown billionaire Jorge Perez: "Bush Poaches a Longtime Clinton Backer."

The biggest donors in American politics don't often cross party lines, but Jeb Bush has scored a major exception. Jorge M. Pérez, a Miami developer known as the "Condo King" for his many high-rise condo projects, has long supported Democrats—and the Clinton clan, in particular—with his campaign contributions. But this presidential election cycle, the billionaire has donated at least $245,000 to Right to Rise, the super-PAC backing Jeb Bush, according to recently filings by the group.

A business lifetime for Perez passed since Jeb Bush left office eight years ago. Perez survived a near-financial death during the housing bust in 2008. Instead defaulting, Perez persuaded bankers that only he could extract value from the mess of downtown Miami.

While South Florida quickly became the foreclosure capital of the nation, big fish like Perez got away. None of Perez' bankers wanted to become Miami real estate owners by putting Perez out of business. Few could have guessed Perez would remerge from the financial carnage, a reborn billionaire. Thank Tim Geithner for that.

"It's pretty shocking," says a Miami-based member of Hillary Clinton's national finance committee. "It's not shocking that a traditional Democratic giver from Miami would give to Jeb, particularly a real estate developer, but Pérez is a longtime stalwart Clinton person."

So what is going through Jorge M. Perez' mind as he pushes Hillary Clinton away? Cuba.

Under a Democratic administration, it is unlikely the White House would put only favored contributors in line for first dibs in Cuba. On the other hand, we know from past experience that Jeb! rewards loyalists and freezes out political enemies.

We know because we witnessed when he was governor, how the outsourcing of public services accrued strictly to the benefit of Bush insiders. For example, from his first day as governor, Jeb! understood that water management infrastructure and changes to water policy acted as spigots to nourish his allies. Just ask Al Cardenas.

For public consumption, Jorge M. Perez will likely say he admired Jeb Bush as governor. What he won't say: on the chance that Jeb makes it through the Republican primary and into the White House, there's a lot more upside than downside to Jorge Perez' contribution to Right to Rise, the Jeb Bush superPAC.

The Sun Rises In Cuba.

The Miami Herald throws another softball to Genting and developer Jorge Perez … by gimleteye

The Miami Herald's Martha Brannigan is good reporter, but the paper she works for is a disaster. The latest example -- a Brannigan story last Friday about Genting, the former Miami Herald property and developer Jorge Perez, who proved that businessmen can have nine lives like cats so long as they are "too big to fail". To read the Herald story independent of history one would think that the Chinese Malaysian Genting, who purchased the former Miami Herald property now Rubble-By-The-Bay in 2011, had called Miami's homegrown billionaire developer (real money, yet?) because it found his name on a wisp of paper in a fortune cookie.

The Herald depicts Perez as a coy helper who may be able to transform the former Herald property on Biscayne Bay into something grand. The Herald's gee whiz tone is as though Genting just found Perez like a penny on the street.

Now, Genting is hitching its star to South Florida’s most prolific developer: Jorge M. Pérez. In an interview, Pérez, chairman and CEO of the Related Group of Florida, told the Miami Herald he was contacted in recent days by a senior Genting official and had preliminary discussions about the possibility of developing the Miami Herald site together.

“They called me to see if I’m interested in maybe developing together," said Pérez, who is currently leading a condominium construction boom in Miami. Pérez said the high-level Genting official, whom he wouldn’t name, told him he would follow up when he was in Miami.

“We’ll probably talk again." Pérez added: “It’s a great site." (Genting Seeks Development Ally, Miami Herald, June 13, 2014)

Puh-leeze. We wouldn't make this such a big deal if the Herald had just once noted the deep Perez/Genting backstory -- that ought to be legitimately highlighted every time the Herald publishes about Genting in connection with Jorge Perez. Why the paper doesn't ties back to the dismal but very profitable circumstances of the sale of the Herald to McClatchy, a publicly traded media giant.

Jorge Perez was one of the insiders who fit into plans for the Herald, from the first it became obvious that the media titan had vastly overpaid to buy the Herald, enriching past publishers, and that something had to be done to extract cash from its investment in order to pay reporters and other employees who work on a more modest rate; ie. selling the Herald site on Biscayne Bay.

In December 2011, Eye On Miami, was the only observer of record how Perez' monetary contribution to the Miami Art Museum for naming rights was nearly the same exact amount he received by selling to Genting senior subordinated debt of the Omni Center, adjacent to the Miami Herald property, that Genting needed for its planned casino footprint and that Perez and two other partners had purchased only six months earlier.

There was nothing illegal in the deal, but it was trenchant if you believe that the city's only daily newspaper ought to be nothing less than scrupulous disclosing its connections to gambling interests, especially when its corporate owner had made a significant gamble itself and found itself so beleaguered it had to mortgage the paper to a casino operator who had yet to secure legislative approval but was clearly planning to turn Miami into Atlantic City. Moreover, find a forty million dollar profit in a six month investment that doesn't smell of an insider trade and I have a bridge to sell you, too. This is all newsworthy! Perez, then nearly bankrupt as a result of the housing bust, got a museum named for him thanks to the neat profit he earned from Genting, but that story never, not once, was reported in the Herald. Now Perez is just Genting's developer ally? A savvy billionaire come to the rescue of casino operator who badly misread Florida politics connected to Miami's Republican delegation and gambling? That's what you would believe if you just read last Friday's story in the Herald.

Brannigan should have written about that shenanigan. Maybe she did. Maybe a Miami Herald editor re-directed the story from negative implications drawn around the naming of the Miami Art Museum. It should be named for Genting, not Jorge Perez.

As the Genting story unfolded in 2011, the Miami Herald was mostly silent. Here is a brief detour down Memory Lane in our archive (click the box, above left, and type in "Genting" or "Jorge Perez"):

"I wouldn't wait for the Miami Herald to print highly critical stories about the effects of gambling on Florida, any more than the Herald wrote critically of the massive fraud underlying the unsustainable building boom in downtown Miami that tied Herald executives, compensation, and prestige to speculators and facilitators (often one and the same) like Greenberg Traurig. For that insight, you will have to continue reading Eyeonmiami. But the Herald did print a story on the lobbying effort in the Tallahassee legislature, "Genting Malaysia Berhad said that they plan only to build a resort, since casinos are not authorized yet, but indicated its interest in continuing a push for a full-fledged casino."

Well, three years after its plan to legalize gambling through the Florida legislature went up in smoke, Genting is now defaulting to its original story line for the former Herald site. The Perez Art Museum should have always been named for Genting, recognizing Jorge Perez on a plaque or sidewalk stone. Give him a cigar and a pat on the back, but don't name a museum for the man who otherwise represented the lack of planning and foresight that is weighing down Miami's economic future. If county commissioners approved that, there would be glimmer of honesty in the public record.

From our man in Havana ... by gimleteye

Jorge Perez walked in for lunch in Havana yesterday. At a nearby table, Perez and his wife were entertained by a beefy gentleman in a tight shirt. Was Mr. Perez in Havana for the art show or some other business. Perhaps, for Genting's casino ambitions? (cf. our blog on Jorge Perez) Or perhaps to investigate condo development in downtown Havana. How many billions vanished in the kleig lights and fumes of the housing boom? ... I was tempted to ask but was caught in reverie, wondering if this would soon become a place where you are as likely to run into Miami businessmen as at Green Street in Coconut Grove. Is Havana the new Aspen? Alfie Fanjul was here a few weeks ago. Now, Mr. Fanjul is a billionaire Cuban American for real. (Perez, on the kindness of bankerz.) If our man in Havana knew Florida's Big Sugar was in Havana, what would he have asked about the Fanjul's non-stop use of Florida's Everglades as a cesspool for phosphorous and mercury. Sugar poisons people, the Everglades, and Florida politics. There is no end to things to wonder about, from Havana.

The Miami Circle is Jorge Perez's $26.7 million Doggy-Shit Park. By Geniusofdespair

The controversy  continues, the friggin dogs are still roaming on the Miami Circle proberty. I took these 2 photos on March 18th, I saw 4 dogs on the Miami Circle property. We forked over $26.7 million of our hard earned tax dollars to buy  friggin' Jorge Perez a dog park for his building, Icon Brickell.  They also use the Miami Circle property for trucks to turn around after making Icon Brickell deliveries. Why isn't there a fence around this property History Museum??

I want my money back!!! The History Museum and Jorge Perez, they both suck!

3 dogs on the Miami Circle Site March 18th

2 Dogs unleashed on the Miami Circle site. Icon Brickell in Background.

Jorge Perez, Here is an Art Lesson for You. Guest blog by Show-Me Mo

Mr. Perez, it is unfortunate that your donation to the Miami Art Museum was not lauded and received as you had expected. Perhaps a lesson on the culture of art in the United States, and the world, might make the situation more clear and understandable for you.

If you look at most of the major city museums in the nation and the world, you will note that few have an individual or family name attached to them. San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago (The Art Institute) Boston, St. Louis, New York (The Metropolitan), MOMA, to name a few. And, to name a few more to drum it into your head, in Rome, you have The City Museum, the Louvre in Paris, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the Singapore Art Museum, the Prado in Madrid and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. And every one of those cities has families for whom $35 million would be pocket change. They all deferred to the good of their cities so that their museums would increase the prestige and stature of the city throughout the world. By giving up the naming rights to those museums, major contributors gained in personal stature just being satisfied to be a part of making such fine institutions possible and enabling them to achieve world class standing.

So, if you really want to achieve the recognition you are due, you will ask that your name not be put on to the museum. Instead, let the main gallery carry your name; that would be appropriate and acceptable to all. Let Miami, the major financial contributor, enjoy the national and international prestige it deserves.

Naming a city’s museum is not the same as naming a performance or sports center. It has significance far beyond the local area; it should be a name that pays tribute to the artists, not to the wealthy donors. In this case, the museum should be named for the city where the Museum is located -- where citizens paid dearly for it with funds and their precious park land.

So Jorge, how about we call it the Miami Art Museum?

Art Basel, Jorge Perez, Genting and the Miami Art Museum ... by gimleteye

It is fitting that the controversy over the naming of the Miami Art Museum after fallen real estate billionaire Jorge Perez (who says there are no third acts?) comes during Art Basel. In major respects-- including political ones-- Miami is the epicenter of the housing boom and bust in Florida and the nation, and yet the atmospherics surrounding Art Basel and its billions of dollars seem to operate in a parallel universe from the economic calamity befalling the city and county's budgets and the nation's debt crisis. Look no further than the Miami skyline and the ghost suburbs of West and South Dade for clues and fingerprints of the worm-hole connecting them. One who travels freely back and forth through that worm-hole is once-billionaire-now-mere-centi-millionaire Jorge Perez.

Perez is at the center of a nasty controversy over his gift of $35 million (in cash and art-- though the art is not disclosed) to the Miami Art Museum so that it would bear his name until the seas rise and claim Biscayne again.

Here is part of the backstory. On Sept. 14, 2011 the Miami Herald reported that Genting-- the casino to be-- purchased a $161 million note on the Omni Center from a partnership including Jorge Perez, Jimmy Tate and Sergio Rok. 

The note was purchased by the Perez investors less than six months earlier, for a reported $100 million. The original 2007 mortgage was for $220 million from Capmark Financial that had a note extension through June 2012. The Perez investment represented 78 percent of the total senior debt. (Capmark Financial had declared bankruptcy in 2009 and was reorganizing at the time of the note purchase. It was founded by an investment group including KKR, Goldman Sachs, and hedge fund investors.)

Was the timing of the Perez purchase coincidental? On May 27, the Miami Herald announced the Genting purchase of the 13.9 acre Miami Herald site for a cool $236 million. Only 10 days earlier, the press reported the purchase of the Omni debt by the Perez group. Genting intends the Omni for its first casino phase, a development it assumes it will get from the Florida legislature.

There are a few ways to look at the $60 million dollar profit turned by Perez and investors. Perez told the Wall Street Journal he was "saddened" that he would be unable to build the project he had planned. To the Real Deal Online, he said, "First of all, we don't know if casinos are going to happen in Miami. The legislature hasn't approved it, and that's still a debatable question. I don't see the opposition that we saw in past year -- it's not been as vociferous as in the past. I have not taken a position on gambling. I, like every citizen, need to weigh the short-term benefits of increased employment and maybe some trade and tourism with the long-term consequences that could be negative." 

One could venture, however, that Perez and certain Genting advisors were deeply involved in mapping out the strategy for the real estate play long before the May public announcements. No one has asked Capmark Financial if it would have held onto its note, had the managers known what was going down at One Herald Square. But that is irrelevant: the Perez investors bought low and sold high (each netting $20 million if they were 1/3 partners in the note) and that from a certain point of view, Genting's name ought to be right alongside Perez' on the new Miami Art Museum.

How do rich people vent? With full page ads. By Geniusofdespair

You can't blame these rich people for getting annoyed at nouveau rich guy Jorge Perez for snagging the name of the soon to be built Miami Art Museum. The funny part is that the rich are trying to arouse us, the riff-raff, to rise up and care with a full page ad in the Miami Herald.  Like I am going to call someone and say: "Hey, don't name the museum after Jorge" because they placed an ad. Note to rich art patron people: I have better things to do. You should have used the ad money to throw a party for us and got us drunk and then MAYBE we would have made those calls for you.

Rich people, do some things with us low-life people once in a while then maybe we will care about the stupid name of your museum. Where were you today during the UDB hearing? Don't care, do you?

Truthfully I am glad you are going to be saddled with that crappy Jorge Perez name on your art museum. Serves you right for letting him into your little club just because he has money. You might note we have a category for Jorge Perez on this blog -- none for you Mary and Howard Frank, which makes you lucky I guess.

Marty Margulies must be laughing his ass off, he wasn't too fond of the way he was treated by MAM folks.

Put An Italian Museum on the National Mall. By Geniusofdespair

Developer Jorge Perez suggests today, in the Miami Herald, that we put a Hispanic Museum on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Perez said: "To pay tribute to the contributions of Latinos to the art, history and culture of the United States. Hmmm. It got me thinking: "What about my ethnic background?" The Italians made lots of contributions to art, history and culture, and, more important, the Italians have a lock on our American diet! Don't we Italian-Americans also have two current Supreme Court Justices to not boast about?

A good idea is a good idea. Lets celebrate ALL the ethnic backgrounds, not leaving any group out! It is only fair. The photo above is my design for the Italian Museum. Please agree to pay homage to my Grandfather, the Italian tailor - a very good man, the son of a failed spaghetti manufacturer.

AIA chips in, on Miami River rehabilitation, but Miami turned its back on the Miami River long ago ... by gimleteye

Miami River, 1918

Sad report in The Miami Herald about the national convention of the American Institute of Architects meeting on Miami Beach to turn brain power to better utilizing the Miami River. This topic-- revitalizing the Miami River-- is high on my list of irritations about Miami and The Miami Herald. I moved to Miami in 1992. As I became involved as civic activist and in conversations with Art Teele who was chairman of the county commission at the time, I asked about the future of the Miami River: why wasn't this living history, core of Miami, planned to focus and drive investment and growth; along the lines of Providence, RI-- where I was born and raised-- and whose river revitalization (including major reworking of highway infrastructure) vastly improved the city's livability and real estate values.

Miami River, recent photo

What I quickly learned in the early 1990's was that private property owners along the river were speculators. They were waiting for housing demand to eventually make the river, run down with a seedy, tropical charm and hang-over from the 1980's, valuable for the same condominium development as had occurred along Brickell Avenue. Moreover, these land owners were one and the same with downtown land use lawyers tied to the Non Group and Herald executives. They were wealthy and they were right. They would have nothing of plans and proposals to covert riverfront into the public commons. One has to search hard for a region of the nation with less respect for the public commons than Miami-Dade. The housing asset bubble gathered steam after Jeb Bush was elected as governor in 1998. What I mean is that Jeb! was all about lowering barriers to construction and development. It was what his campaign contributors wanted and what he was predisposed to deliver. "We only build what the market wants."

From a pragmatic, taxpayer point of view, the condo boom was the worst thing to happen to Miami in 100 years. The Miami River reflects that truth. We are only in the early stages of coming to grips with the misallocation of public resources (ie. budget deficits) to satisfy the greed of land speculators. An arts district then, in the 1990's, would have become a magnet for surrounding areas that are still badly lacking in investment. Instead, city fathers gave developers the key to the city without any question by the Herald or the mainstream media. Jorge Perez and Related is an example. Through land use law firm Greenberg Traurig, Perez argued for sharply limiting public access to the waterfront in order to maximize his developable footprint at ICON, now a billion dollar financial crater. Jorge Perez has company: there are plenty of NEO wannabe's selling at 50 percent discounts and more. "We only make product that the market wants." I don't think we should let go of this idiocy any more than let go of what BP is doing in the Gulf of Mexico.

What the "new city" did that Perez and others championed, drowning out civic activists, was this: Miami turned its back on the Miami River. (Look, if you can bear it, at The Miami Circle-- not for what it was, but what it represented: huge public interest in our heritage and the river.) The final product of the "new" Miami was billions of dollars in defaults, foreclosures, and the shameful emergence of vulture investors as heroes cleaning up the mess. (And elected officials-- at least in the county--who helped cause this mess are still mumbling incoherently from the dais. VNS comes to mind.)

The concrete footprints along the Miami River, the failed condos and blocked access, can't be undone. The bad land use decisions, urged on by lobbyists at City and County Hall, impose their own costs. These are severe to Miami as the Gulf oil spill: our lives have been changed through no fault of our own. The complaint has one caveat; that we elected the public officials whose inattention and own self-serving interests guided permitting and zoning decisions. That's the hard part for me: as much as we want to fix the river and to be optimistic, what we did-- in order for a few people to profit-- is done.

That's why reading today's, "Planners see great potential in a revitalized Miami River" is dispiriting. The writer, Andres Viglucci, surely knows how little opportunity is left for the river after the scavenging of the past decade. Pointing that out is left to the blogs. The Miami River was a stolen car dismantled in a chop shop and sold for parts. It is not a point of view favored by the Herald that had its own real estate speculation as a bottom line rather than reporting out asset bubbles. Click here for the Herald report.

A reader asks about Related Group's Jorge Perez and subsidies... by gimleteye

A reader asks: "Am i the only one who thinks this is a blatant misuse of public funds? Scary! $154,000 per UNIT! to finish units that are 80% done in a neighborhood with 50-75K condos all around. Still, the developers are neing taken care of! disgusting!"

Miami-Dade County funnels $9.8 million to Jorge Perez venture
By Yudislaidy Fernandez
Globally famed for luxury condo towers, Miami developer Jorge Perez, partnering with an affordable housing developer under a new entity, is getting almost $10 million from Miami-Dade County to finish half-built rental buildings in Little Havana.
Commissioners last week approved Bruno Barreiro's use of $10.5 million — an amount allocated to each of the 13 commissioners for capital improvements in their districts — to finish affordable housing projects. (click, read more)

...
Most of the money is going to RUDG LLC, a company formed more than six months ago by The Urban Development Group's Albert Milo and The Related Group's Mr. Perez, who before building nationally touted high-priced waterfront towers built homes for low-income families.
When requesting the funds' approval, Mr. Barreiro told other commissioners this was a way to leverage general obligation bond funds because it would help finish struggling projects and create more affordable housing.
Mr. Perez enjoyed success during the building boom with condos in South Florida, Fort Myers, Las Vegas and elsewhere and was labeled the "Donald Trump of the Tropics." But he was badly hit by the bust, running into trouble with lenders after his company couldn't make debt payments. Lenders now control Related's three-tower Icon Brickell and are trying to sell its 1,600 remaining condos.
In late December, Related got a $6.3 million sales tax refund after a county enterprise zone was expanded to include Icon Brickell. The refund comes from sales taxes the group paid for construction materials to build the complex.
The developer duo is getting $3.7 million for construction on 24-unit Porto Allegre at 574 SW First St. and $6.1 million to finish 49-unit Toscana at 126 SW Eighth Ave., Little Havana rental buildings. Porto Allegre is about 80% complete, Toscana 65%.
The original developer of both was Miami-based mFm Construction, which built several projects in the area.
Mr. Perez's office said he was traveling and unavailable.
Mr. Perez and Mr. Milo are to take over the two foreclosed-upon developments planned during the boom as condos, said Mr. Milo, RUDG's vice president.
Taking over a half-built project is "certainly more challenging than a project we start from the beginning," he said. This type of project, he added, requires more due diligence to know how previous owners handled it.
The group is considering hiring the original developer on a consulting basis, Mr. Milo said, "to give us the background on what transpired before us getting control of the project."
Slated as affordable apartments for the elderly, the properties are to be run long-term by a local housing agency.
Mr. Milo says he expects to start construction within three months, with the company soliciting to hire added contractors for the job.
Once construction begins, each project should take about six months, Mr. Milo said. The county is to monitor process and make monthly site inspections, he said, to ensure the projects stay on track.