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GRIFFANAGATE UPDATE: THE DENIAL DIDN’T AGE WELL
Back in January, the rumor was a $700 million Ken Griffin buyout of Mana Wynwood, with talk of some “college style campus” replacing the convention center. Griffin’s people said there were no talks. Moishe Mana said the same thing, in his own words: “If there is a deal, we would announce it.”
We ran that story with the joke that both sides denying it within hours was basically a confirmation with extra steps.
Turns out we weren’t wrong to be skeptical of the denial.
The Real Deal, the same outlet that reported the original denial, is now reporting that Mana is selling the Wynwood complex to Griffin. Not “in talks.” Not “sources say discussions are ongoing.” Reportedly selling. That’s a different sentence than the one they printed in January, and TRD doesn’t downgrade a story from denied to happening unless something moved.
Here’s what makes this land different than the first go around. While Griffin’s camp was publicly saying there was no deal, his actual behavior in Wynwood never paused. He closed on 545Wyn for north of $180 million. His broker, Mario Borda, quietly rolled up all 35 units at Wynwood Lofts through five separate LLCs, the kind of structure you use when you don’t want anyone connecting the dots too early. None of that reads like a guy who’s not interested in the neighborhood. It reads like a guy assembling a position before making the one purchase that actually matters, the 45 acres Mana spent over a decade putting together.
Mr Miami Take: Wynwood’s largest landowner is reportedly handing the keys to Wynwood’s most aggressive buyer, and the neighborhood that built its identity on warehouses and street art is about to be owned, in large part, by a hedge fund billionaire who’s been buying the block around it for a year. Whatever gets built on 45 acres of Mana’s land isn’t going to look like what got Wynwood famous. That’s not a prediction. That’s just what happens when the person circling the neighborhood for a year finally closes.
New Series Alert: Life in Short Form w/ Zoli Honig, Miami Entrepreneurship, Technology, & Life from the Frontlines
COVID shut the world down and opened a door for me instead.
I arrived at Reef Technology, through a teams call, not knowing a soul, and Zoli Honig was on the other side of the line. Reef raised over two billion dollars and was the largest startup in Miami. Sixteen of us were on a Microsoft Teams call at 8am every morning trying to keep it standing. Zoli was the one person in the building who already knew short form video was going to change everything. He taught me how it’s was done. I returned the favor.
We are done keeping those conversations off the record. Life in Short Form is a new monthly series I am launching with Zoli, taped out of the What’s Good Studio at the Moore. No script. No polish. Two guys who met as employees, went out and built our own things, and stuck around long enough to watch this city change shape in real time.
We both thought we could get rich living inside someone else’s dream. Turns out, like most things worth having, you only get there by doing it yourself, risk and all. That is the path to the money. It is also the path to fulfillment, and we didn’t understand that until we were already on it.
Building a Small Business in Miami
Every transplant from New York says the same thing in year one. Nothing moves. Zoli calls it the Miami stupid tax. Nobody calls you back same day.
Zoli’s wife closed her first real estate deal here and the clients called her the best agent they’d ever worked with. She didn’t do anything extraordinary. She showed up on time. She answered her texts. As Woody Allen said “eighty percent of success is showing up.” In Miami, showing up puts you in the top ten percent.
That gap is the opportunity.
