Tibor Hollo’s Record-Breaking Sale and the Development of Miami’s Brickell

April 22, 2022

Florida East Coast Realty, owned by Tibor Hollo just sold a Miami Brickell development site for a record price, $363 million, to a company in Delaware under the name Florida LLC. The sale price equated to around $3,340 per square foot or around $145 million per acre.

The 2.5-acre site itself is located at 1201 Brickell Bay Drive and has been in limbo for a major development to come in and utilize the property. It is currently approved for 2 supertall towers rising 1,049 feet tall.

The original plan also included 1,120 residential condo units with underground parking and a walkway connecting the two towers. This project itself was referred to as Villa Magna and was proposed in 2006-07 but was later canceled in 2007.

Florida East Coast Realty, Corigin Real Estate Group, and McCourt Global Properties originally planned the 2 tower development with British architect Foster + Partners.

The buyer LLC (Florida LLC) was created in March 2022 and is managed by Randall Davis, a Houston developer. Although listed as a Delaware company, Randall Davis has a Chicago address.

According to county records, Florida East Coast Realty paid $15.5 million for the property in 2000. The current acquisition outperforms the previous record price for the property, established in 2011 when Genting Group paid $236 million for a 14-acre site that was the longtime home of the Miami Herald in downtown Miami’s Arts & Entertainment District.

Tibor Hollo is an American real estate developer and founder of Florida East Coast Realty. Hollo was born in Budapest, Hungary, and obtained his degree in architecture from Ecole Polytechnique Institute before immigrating to the United States with $18 in his pocket.

Before becoming a big name in real estate, he worked at a curtain factory and shortly after became an estimator for a general contractor. He worked at a curtain factory before landing a job as an estimator for a general contractor. During this work, he noticed that a lot of contractors were turning down jobs in New York so he started his own firm. In 1956, on a business trip, he fell in love with South Florida and then sold his contracting company and moved to Miami. He later founded East Coast Realty in 1972.

According to his biography, Hollo only works on one project at a time and never borrows more than 40% of the cost of the project. Hollo is responsible for the creation of the Vizcaya Tower, Opera Tower, Biscayne Bay Marriott, and the Panorama Tower.