Prized Possession Developer Cameron Kuhn has had his eye on Church Street Station since the early 1990s, when he first began rehabbing downtown Orlando properties. He landed his “dream property” this spring, when he bought it for $34 million at a bankruptcy auction. [Photo: Jeffrey Camp]

Holding court in the glass-walled penthouse of The Plaza, the shiny, cylindrical office tower he’s finishing at Orange Avenue and Church Street, Cameron Kuhn looks every bit Orlando’s downtown giant.

Literally, because he is 6 feet 4 and upward of 300 pounds.

Figuratively, because he has rejuvenated 20 properties in this key part of downtown — an area other developers shunned when Kuhn began renovating buildings in the early 1990s.

From his 21st-floor suite in the $140-million Plaza, the largest revitalization project in Orlando’s history, the giant can survey his works at every turn: To the east, along Orange

Avenue, the old J.C. Penney building, now three stories of retail and office space with balconies. The glass-and-steel Mini Cooper building. The once-sagging Have a Nice Day Café, now trendy architectural office space.

And just across Orange from The Plaza is the project Kuhn has coveted since he first arrived in Orlando: Church Street Station, the three-block, historic-themed entertainment complex at the CSX railroad tracks and Interstate 4. Once the fourth-largest tourist destination in Florida, Church Street Station had fallen on hard times by the time Kuhn moved here from Chicago in 1991. In 2001, he told Florida Trend it was his dream property, the only “cool” buildings left to redevelop downtown. He tried to buy it but failed.

"Today in this market, I’m the villain. But one year from now, I’ll be the hero." [Photo: Jeffrey Camp]

This spring, however, Kuhn realized his dream, buying Church Street for $34 million at the bankruptcy auction that disposed of the assets of Lou Pearlman, the former Orlando music producer now jailed on federal charges related to a $317-million investment scheme.

Some considered Kuhn’s timing brilliant: The purchase coincided with construction of a new Church Street exit off I-4; a new arena planned nearby just north of the highway; a new performing arts center under way downtown, and a possible light-rail station coming right in on the tracks.

But a series of lawsuits, retreats and angry Plaza tenants suggests that even the giant isn’t immune to the upheavals in the residential real estate and credit markets that have withered many developers’ fortunes. Since buying Church Street in April, Kuhn has missed several large payments to investors; The Plaza’s general contractor and others have sued him; and he appears to be retreating on his most recent big vision — reinvigorating part of downtown Jacksonville’s business district.

Despite all that, Kuhn, 48, reveals no hint of concern — nothing, in fact, but an almost shameless confidence in himself and his projects. “Today in this market, I’m the villain,” says Kuhn, complaining that his high-profile projects bring him scrutiny that other developers don’t have to endure. “But one year from now, I’ll be the hero.”

‘Not my problem’

Kuhn says his finances are rock solid and that he’s positioned better than any other developer in Orlando’s downtown. He says he has only $6 million in debt remaining on The Plaza, and 100,000 square feet left to sell. Once he’s completed an in-the-works lease, he says, “I will have 70,000 square feet left with no debt at all.”

Lawsuits involving Kuhn filed in the Orange County Courthouse paint a shakier financial picture. The majority are between Kuhn and Frank Vennes Jr., a Minnesota investor who also operates numerous businesses from Palm Beach County. Central Florida bankers introduced the two men a couple of years ago, when Kuhn was hunting capital for the J.C. Penney project, known as Cornerstone. Vennes invested in that and several other Kuhn projects, including The Plaza.

In three lawsuits, Vennes says Kuhn owes him a total of more than $15 million. Kuhn borrowed nearly $5 million to buy a building he needed to complete The Plaza but didn’t pay up when the money was due in June, one suit claims. Vennes says Kuhn owes another $8 million related to the River Watch project in downtown Jacksonville, where Vennes helped finance Kuhn’s purchase of the SunTrust Tower and an adjoining vacant lot that would become a parking garage. The third suit claims Vennes made a $2-million short-term loan to Kuhn at 24% interest. According to the terms of the promissory note, the rate would adjust to 36% if Kuhn didn’t repay the loan in full by July 22. He didn’t. In his own lawsuit, Kuhn claims Vennes is charging an illegally high interest rate under Florida law. Vennes’ attorney, Tucker H. Byrd of Greenberg Traurig in Orlando, says Kuhn agreed to the loan conditions, which were written under Minnesota law.

“Is Cameron Kuhn out of money? That’s the question everyone is asking me,” says Byrd. “I have no idea, and I certainly hope not because he owes us a lot of money. I want him to succeed wildly so that he can pay Mr. Vennes back.”
Also this year:

» Kuhn reneged on an agreement with Orange County to buy the former FAMU law school on Orange Avenue for $6.5 million, walking away from a $200,000 deposit.

» Kuhn was six months late in paying $180,000 to Orlando for traffic improvements near The Plaza.

» The Plaza’s general contractor, Brasfield & Gorrie of Birmingham, Ala., slapped a $5.4-million lien on the project for non-payment. Kuhn and the contractor recently reached a confidential settlement.

Kuhn dismisses the lawsuits as “not my problem” and “all just part of the process.”

“The problem is the marketplace, the securities market, the lack of financing, and the lack of people being able to buy,” Kuhn says. “I’m not the only (developer) having issues, and in fact, out of most of us, I feel the best.”

Kuhn’s World Four of Cameron Kuhn’s downtown Orlando holdings — The Plaza towers (top); the old ABC liquor warehouse (right), now office condos; Church Street Station (left); and the glass-and-steel Mini Cooper dealership. [Photos: Jeffrey Camp]

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.)

“Is Cameron Kuhn out of money? That’s the question everyone is asking me. I have no idea, and I certainly hope not because he owes us a lot of money.” — Attorney Tucker H. Byrd

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.”