Does a billionaire landowner have plans for historic building in downtown Miami?

One of Miami’s biggest landowners recently went on a buying spree that included the historic former post office building in downtown Miami.

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Real estate developer Moishe Mana bought the building and an adjacent property for $20.3 million, capping several weeks of multimillion-dollar real estate purchases.

The most recent string of acquisitions added to the billionaire’s massive footprint in Wynwood and downtown. The purchases included $12.6 million in commercial condo units at the nearby One Flagler office building and $24.5 million for a Wynwood building that houses the Miami location of the restaurant Pastis.

Mana owns about 80 properties in the downtown area, including the former SunTrust Bank tower at Flagler Street and Biscayne Boulevard, which he bought for $110 million earlier this year. He owns nearly 50 acres of land in Wynwood, with Mana Wynwood, a convention center, as his portfolio’s centerpiece. He has also recently started acquiring land across Interstate 95 from Wynwood in Allapattah.

Mana has been amassing his portfolio in Miami for more than 15 years. But so far, he seems to be holding onto his land, rather than building on it.

The post office, 100 NE First Ave., is near the Flagler Street corridor, which was once Miami’s main street. The area has since lost its luster, but Mana has long promised that he’d revitalize it. While Mana declined to specify what the future holds for the old post office building and its neighboring lot, he said in a statement that it’s an “important piece” of a “larger vision.”

“For years, downtown Miami and the Flagler district were neglected. We have been systematically and strategically assembling properties throughout the neighborhood, driving its renaissance and bringing new energy, investment and opportunity back to the historic heart of Miami,” Mana said.

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Mana moved to New York from Israel as a young man in the 1980s and has since founded businesses including a moving company and a document storage company. Mana also developed Milk Studios, a media and arts hub in New York’s meatpacking district, as well as Mana Contemporary in Jersey City.

The post office building had previously been home to local brewery Biscayne Bay Brewing. The longtime tenant moved out of the top floor of the former post office building late last year.

The previous owner of the post office building, Stambul Construction, had plans to bring more bars and restaurants. But much of the building remained vacant in the years since the company bought the property more than a decade ago. A company connected to Stambul paid $11 million for the building in 2014.

The seller was represented in the transaction by the brokerage Gridline Properties. Mateo Romero, a partner at Gridline, told the Miami Herald that Mana doesn’t have immediate plans for the lot at 54 NE Second St., which is next to the former post office building. But the 15,000-square-foot lot, which is zoned for high-density development, could potentially be the site of a future mixed-used project.

Romero said the plan for the post office building is to fill it with tenants relocated from other properties owned by Mana. When asked by the Miami Herald if that was his plan, Mana did not answer.

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