Miami-Dade and Monroe Counties: Economic strengths and challenges, people to watch

Regional Roundup

Miami-Dade County
County Population: 2.79 millon, +5.5% vs. 2013
5-Year Change in Wages / Salaries: 23.1%
Per Capita Income: $47,667

• Developers of Prive at Island Estate in Aventura won a $26-million jury verdict against the Williams Island Property Owners Association, which attempted to block Prive’s development on a nearby island. The association effort was unsuccessful, and the developer countersued, alleging that the association violated an agreement between its developer and the Prive developers in which both promised not to interfere with developments on each other’s islands.
• Coral Gables-based Bacardi will purchase Patron Spirits, known for its tequila, for an undisclosed price. Bacardi has owned a minority stake in the company since 2008 but will own all of it when the transaction closes.
• Perry Ellis International founder George Feldenkreis, currently the company’s largest shareholder, launched a bid to take the publicly traded fashion company private by buying the roughly 89% of shares that he doesn’t own. Feldenkreis’ son, Oscar Feldenkreis, is the company’s president and CEO, and the elder Feldenkreis is a member of the board.
• Cruise ships failed 15 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sanitation inspections in 2017 — a record for the industry, where the typical annual failure rate has been two to four per year. Five Carnival Cruise ships failed inspections, along with ships from Norwegian Cruise Lines, Oceana Cruises and smaller lines.
• Swiss financier Joseph Benhamou and family members will purchase Brickell Bank from majority shareholder Banco Espírito Santo, which is in liquidation. Members of the Benhamou family are majority owners an independent private bank in Switzerland, CBH Compagnie Bancaire Helvétique. When European regulators seized Banco Espírito Santo in 2014, they ordered it to sell Brickell Bank.
• Fashion designer Naeem Khan will move his headquarters to Miami from New York and will open a fashion studies high school next door. The school will be an extension of Miami-Dade County Public Schools’ magnet Design and Architecture Senior High and should allow DASH to grow its fashion program from 100 to 400 students.
• British small-space hotel company Yotel will launch its new extended-stay format with a 30-story tower in Miami developed in a joint venture between Miami-based Aria Development Group and Kuwait-based AQARAT. YotelPad will include 250 Yotel hotel suites and 208 condos, which owners can rent as hotel suites.
• Non-invasive medical technology maker Insightec, which splits its headquarters between Miami and Haifa, Israel, raised $150 million. Koch Disruptive Technologies led the round with $100 million.
• The owners of Sergio’s Cuban Kitchen and Bar signed a deal with Cuban Manna to open dozens of Sergio’s Cuban fastcasual, healthy Cuban foods restaurants in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.
• The owners of the Jungle Island animal attraction, which has been shut down since Hurricane Irma, plan to reopen late this spring with new attractions opening by late summer.
• Former Miami Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria says that he did not make a profit on the $1.2-billion sale of the team and will not be sharing any of the sale price with the county and city. As part of the deal in which the county funded the majority of the team’s new stadium, Miami and Miami-Dade are entitled to 5% of any profits Loria and his partners make from selling the team within 10 years of building the stadium. The county plans to sue.
• Team Citi.moov won Fastrack Institute’s 16-week Miami mobility competition with its idea for applications and software that will incentivize residents to share rides, bike or use public transit. The team is trying to raise $500,000 to launch in Miami.

Monroe County
County Population: 76,265, +4.1% vs. 2013
5-Year Change in Wages / Salaries: 20.5%
Per Capita Income: $81,211

• Baptist Health South Florida will spend $40 million to rebuild Fishermen’s Community Hospital in Marathon and hopes to raise $15 million in donations for the work, set to begin next year. The hospital, destroyed during Hurricane Irma, is the only one in an 80-mile stretch between Tavernier and Key West. Hospital employees are working out of a temporary field hospital.

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Tags: Miami-Dade, Economic Yearbook