Sale of Miami’s Riverside Center to help fund its replacement

Miami is channeling roughly $60 million in projected proceeds from the planned sale of its aging administration building downtown into a dedicated fund for the city’s new $250 million-plus civic campus rising near Miami Freedom Park, expected to open in 2028.

The Miami City Commission is set to vote April 9 on a plan to capture proceeds from the Miami Riverside Center (MRC) as part of the financing structure for the city’s new municipal complex. The deal would direct an estimated $58 million to $69 million in value from the outdated riverfront headquarters into a restricted capital fund for the project, under terms tied to a 2019 agreement with developer Lancelot Miami River LLC.

The agreement, with Lancelot Miami River LLC, an affiliate of Adler Group, currently governs the city’s long-term arrangement of its current administration building at 444 SW Second Ave., which is leased for about $3.62 million a year. It also includes an option for the developer to buy the MRC property for $69.4 million, or a net estimated value of at least $58.6 million after credits and adjustments, according to city documents.

Under the resolution, those proceeds would be placed into a capital account dedicated exclusively to construction of the new administration building. The money would be tracked separately and could only be used for capital costs tied to the project, not general operations.

The push to replace MRC dates to 2015, when city officials first deemed the downtown headquarters originally constructed for FPL “functionally obsolete.” In 2016, the city issued competitive solicitations for both a new administrative building and redevelopment of the existing site. Lancelot was selected as the top-ranked bidder, advancing an initial public-private plan that paired redevelopment of the riverfront property with construction of a replacement city facility on adjacent land owned by the developer.

In 2018, voters approved a 99-year lease and purchase option for MRC, followed by a 2019 agreement establishing lease terms and a potential sale arrangement tied to the original redevelopment plan.

The project shifted in 2022, when the city abandoned the riverfront construction site and selected city-owned land at its former Melreese Golf Course at 1822 NW 37th Ave., now part of the Miami Freedom Park development anchored by Inter Miami CF’s newly opened stadium.

The estimated cost of the project was first set at roughly $150 million in 2019, when the city signaled its intent to issue bonds to finance a new administrative complex tied to the original riverfront plan. That figure later increased by $100 million to about $250 million after the relocation to the Melreese site in 2022 and the expansion of the civic campus under a revised plan in 2023.

The project has since moved into execution under an amended development management and construction agreement approved in 2023, under which Adler Development Manager LLC oversees construction for a fee of up to 5% of project costs.

Ground was broken in January 2025, and site work is underway on the new eight-story building, which will span more than 380,000 square feet once complete. Designed by Arquitectonica, the campus will consolidate city departments into a purpose-built space, with Moss Construction serving as the general contractor.

Construction is expected to wrap up in late 2027, with full operations anticipated by early 2028.

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