How Miami taxpayers could be left holding a $400m bill for luxury real estate

The Fisher Island neighborhood in Miami, Florida. Photograph: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg via Getty Images View image in fullscreen The Fisher Island neighborhood in Miami, Florida. Photograph: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg via Getty Images Analysis How Miami taxpayers could be left holding a $400m bill for luxury real estate Joseph Contreras in Miami Miami-Dade county officials agreed to pay HRP Group more than double the price for land on Fisher Island to protect fuel depot used by the cruise industry A three-way tug-of-war erupted in recent months over ownership of a property on Fisher Island – one of the wealthiest zip codes in the United States – that sits in Biscayne Bay opposite the skyline of downtown Miami . When TransMontaigne Partners, a Denver-based global energy company, put the parcel on the market in May 2024, interest ran high because that land represented the last remaining piece of real estate available for development on the island. The eventual winner of the bidding war was a Chicago-based developer called the HRP Group, which purchased the property for $180m in late September last year. The developer then announced ambitious plans to build condominium towers on the property at an estimated cost of $2bn. After a series of events that unfolded over the past eight months, most of which occurred quietly and behind closed doors, the HRP Group reportedly struck an agreement in principle to sell the property to Miami-Dade county for $400m. The developer stands to reap a windfall $220m in profit without ever breaking ground on the site – and the county’s taxpayers will have no choice but to foot the bill. Miami residents sue over land for Trump presidential library Read more There was always one catch to the purchase of the property located at 1 Fisher Island Drive. The site is host to a Depression-era fuel depot that services Miami’s cruise line industry, and its squat, unsightly fuel tanks have a way of ruining the otherwise spectacular views of some Fisher Island swells. Those vital pieces of infrastructure would have to go – and under the terms of sale, the HRP Group agreed to demolish the fueling facility and undertake whatever environmental cleanup would be necessary before construction of the envisioned condominium towers would commence. As word began to spread last summer that the much-coveted property might be changing hands soon, senior officials of Miami-Dade county went into panic mode. Miami is host to the busiest cruise line port in the world, and the loss of the fuel depot would deal a major blow to industry titans such as Royal Caribbean and Carnival. The nearest fueling terminal is 22 miles away at Fort Lauderdale’s Port Everglades – and if several high-profile cruise companies ever decided to abandon the Port of Miami as their main point of departure in the US, it could mean the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs for the local economy. An emergency meeting of the 13-member board of the county commissioners was