The mayoral factor

Sweating and swearing as he tears out a chunk of floor at Brick & Fire, his new, upscale pizza restaurant at Church Street Station, chef/partner Mark Dollard says Kuhn has “a certain degree of arrogance” that makes him a lightning rod for critics.

Dollard had a successful restaurant in Church Street, Absinthe Bistro & Bar, before Kuhn bought the complex and ordered him to come up with something edgier or move out. Kuhn approved Brick & Fire, “cherry picking the menu items he liked best,” Dollard says. “That would be maddening for a lot of people, and it was maddening for me, but he wants Church Street Station to work.”

Kuhn has left some former Church Street tenants feeling that he didn’t keep his word. One, Orlando Improv Comedy Club, alleges in a lawsuit that Kuhn effectively kicked the club out by failing to secure its state liquor license as he’d agreed.

Meanwhile, numerous new tenants in The Plaza’s two towers say they are considering legal action because Kuhn failed to complete commons areas and keep other promises. The towers “are kind of like a movie star with cancer — beautiful on the outside and very sick on the inside,” says Tom Vaughan of the law firm Vaughan & Maxwell, who bought 3,000 square feet on the ninth floor of the north tower and has been trying for nearly a year to get Kuhn to finish some details and upgrade others he says were done on the cheap. “I haven’t talked to anybody in either building who doesn’t have a complaint,” Vaughan says. “Everybody’s just sick about it.”

Change of Plans Kuhn bought the SunTrust Tower in Jacksonville for $37 million in 2005. He planned to convert the property to retail and office condos, but a market slowdown put his plans on hold. He has reportedly tried to sell the tower. [Photo: Florida Times-Union]

The friction extends to Kuhn’s personal life. His divorce from Lauri Fields Kuhn, his second wife and the mother of his third child, was finalized in 2005, but a claim involving The Plaza continues. She alleges that he filed for divorce from her secretly — and in a different county — to trigger a marital asset date that would keep her from any claim to the building. Kuhn’s own mother, Orlando business-etiquette consultant Barbara Bergstrom, once told the Orlando Sentinel: “I love him. But I don’t like him.”

Kuhn’s mother may not like him, but the mayor of Orlando does. Much to the chagrin of critics who resent the financial incentives given Kuhn over the years — $22 million in city loans and subsidies for The Plaza alone — Mayor Buddy Dyer remains one of his most ardent supporters.

Dyer met Kuhn in January 2003, when he was first running for the office. He asked Kuhn to meet him for coffee at a breakfast place on Pine called First Watch. The two talked about the spark Orlando needed for revitalization to take off. They agreed that the block at Church Street and Orange Avenue — then owned by Joe Lewis’ Tavistock Group — was key.

“I suggested to him, ‘Why don’t you buy the block?’ Wouldn’t you know that he did it?” Dyer says. “If there is one thing you can point to that was a catalyst for everything that happened downtown, that was it. It was a huge risk. And it wasn’t the city taking the risk — it was Cameron Kuhn and his companies.”

After the city approved The Plaza incentives package in 2004, Kuhn hired away the man who’d helped land it, David Dix, Dyer’s consultant and campaign manager for every single political race since 1992. In fall 2005, Kuhn sent Dix to Jacksonville to head up downtown redevelopment projects there, including lobbying the city’s Economic Development Commission for incentives. Kuhn purchased Jacksonville’s SunTrust Tower for $37 million, along with the $6-million lot next door, now collectively known as River Watch at City Centre; the Dyal-Upchurch building on Bay Street for more than $4 million; the former Barnett Bank building, which he renamed One12, for $4.1 million.

When Kuhn first came to town, Jacksonville officials heralded him as their own downtown giant, who would ignite the River City with the same sort of spark he’d struck in Orlando a decade before. (Kuhn also had made a minor splash in St. Petersburg, where he rehabbed and sold the Detroit Hotel, Tamiami, The Garden and Jannus Landing.)

However, the downturn in the condo market has put the brakes on Kuhn’s Jacksonville plans. The company reportedly has tried to sell River Watch and One12 to a hotel developer. Kuhn recently laid off several employees in Orlando and one in Jacksonville. His main point man and deal maker in Jacksonville, George Moore, has resigned. And the Jacksonville officials who once celebrated him now see the giant from a different perspective. “In Jacksonville we have about $1 billion worth of projects going on downtown,” says Paul Crawford, deputy executive director of the Jacksonville Economic Development Commission. Kuhn’s, he says, “are not the only projects, or the largest projects.”

Kuhn betrays not a hint of self-doubt as he discusses fast-changing plans for the Jacksonville properties. The latest: Converting what were to be condos to rentals. “The beauty of our product is that we can change that fast,” he says with a snap of his finger. “The rental market is going to explode.”

Tags: Central, Housing/Construction