Nearly Vacant South Beach Office Building Hits The Market

Lincoln Place, a prominent South Beach office building once entangled in a high-profile crowdfunding scandal, is now up for sale with a target price of $82 million, according to The Real Deal.

Located at 1601 Washington Avenue in Miami Beach, the eight-story property includes 111,400 square feet of office space, 26,700 square feet of ground-floor retail, and a 499-space parking garage. The listing, marketed by JLL, represents the sale of the building’s ground lease, which is owned by New York-based Granite Point Mortgage Trust and runs through 2092. The City of Miami Beach owns the land beneath it.

Although no official asking price has been disclosed in marketing materials, a source familiar with the offering indicated the target is around $82 million. Currently, only 14.8% of the property is leased, with all retail and most office space vacant.

Lincoln Place was built in 2002 and has a controversial history. It was previously tied to Elie Schwartz, CEO of Nightingale Properties, who became the focus of a federal wire fraud case. In 2016, Nightingale and JBL Asset Management purchased the ground lease for $80 million, with JBL taking an 8.7% stake. However, Schwartz was later found to have misappropriated nearly $63 million from over 800 investors via crowdfunding platform CrowdStreet, some of which was intended for Lincoln Place.

After pleading guilty, Schwartz was sentenced to over seven years in prison in May. He had previously agreed to sell Lincoln Place to Robert Rivani’s Black Lion and Mathieu Massa’s Massa Investment Group for approximately $82 million to repay defrauded investors. That deal ultimately fell through, leading to litigation over a $2 million deposit. The case was resolved in favor of Black Lion last September.

In February, Granite Point reclaimed the ground lease through a lease-in-lieu of foreclosure after Nightingale defaulted on its $84.7 million debt.

Lincoln Place formerly served as the headquarters for Starwood Capital, which occupied the building from 2016 until relocating in 2022. The office market in Miami Beach has since grown, spurred by out-of-state business migration during the pandemic. New office developments are reshaping the area, including The Fifth Miami Beach and the fully leased Eighteen Sunset building, signaling a shift away from South Beach’s party-centric image toward a more business-friendly environment.