County grants $2 million for Sawyer’s Walk added development costs

The developers of Sawyer’s Walk, a 1.5-million-square-foot multi-use project in Miami’s Overtown, received a $2 million grant from county commissioners last week based on a letter seeking the money to cover part of a $16 million covid-generated cost overrun.

The funding is to go to the 578 units of senior affordable housing that are part of the project. The developer, in a press release last month, said that the development’s office and retail space are 100% leased and the project is to open this summer.

Also last month, the world’s largest shipping and third-largest cruise company, MSC Group, announced that it had acquired 130,000 square feet of the project’s offices to serve as its new North American headquarters.

The county legislation granting the $2 million did not go through the normal committee review. The Swerdlow Group, which is among the developers, wrote Dec. 1 that “given that the project needs this grant in short order, we request that the county get a waiver of needing a committee meeting to discuss the grant request … to cover project costs that are owed.”

The county commission did not discuss the grant, which was added to the agenda late. Chairman Oliver Gilbert III at the meeting’s outset noted that the session would be short with little talk so that some members could get to Tallahassee for Miami-Dade County Days on Feb. 7 and 8. The vote to approve the grant was 12-0.

The site has long been a target for redevelopment. The City of Miami two decades ago obtained the county land there to construct affordable and workforce housing. The program had been approved before an activist lawsuit blocked it and it was eventually unable to meet a 2007 deadline to start construction.

The current Sawyer’s Walk project was the selected development option for a Southeast Overtown/Park West Community Redevelopment Agency request for proposals in 2017, which had the goal of affordable housing in the urban core and reactivating the neighborhood. Documents on file with the city in 2020 showed 154 apartments in the project were to be affordable and 402 were to be at market rate.

Documents provided to county commissioners last week show that current plans are to have 578 affordable rental units “to be occupied by elderly persons and low- to moderate-income persons and families, including the residents of the Harry Cain Towers, a public housing development that is owned by the county, but that was closed due to health and safety issues.”

According to the company’s press release, the seniors being targeted are to earn no more than 60% of the area median income to live in studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments.

Target with 50,000 square feet is to anchor the ground floor’s 175,000 square feet of retail, with an ALDI Grocery taking 25,000 square feet. Others in the retail tenant roster are Ross Dress for Less, Burlington, and Tropical Smoothie, according to the developers. The county legislation also lists Starbucks and a CVS drug store.

The 3.4-acre Sawyer’s Walk, at 249 NW Sixth St., will have over 1,000 parking spaces. It is designed by Miami’s Arquitectonica architects.

The county’s Housing Finance Authority in 2020 approved issuing $185 million in multifamily housing revenue debt as a loan to Block 55 Residential LP, an affiliate of Block 55 Owner, which is the project’s official developer. The loan finances Sawyer’s Landing, the multifamily housing being built at Sawyer’s Walk. The project is also getting a $1 million grant to cover the rising construction costs that came with the covid onset and subsequent global supply chain bottleneck that the developers say have raised their costs by $16 million.

Because of the bonds for the project, said the Swerdlow Group’s December letter to district county Commissioner Keon Hardemon seeking the $2 million grant, “we are subject to a multitude of restrictions for arranging additional debt for the project.”