Miami-Dade courthouse auction gets zero bids, extended to Sept. 18
Nearly 50,000 people looked. Nobody bid. The county just gave the market three more weeks at the same number.
Miami-Dade County’s online auction for its vacant historic downtown courthouse closed August 28 with zero bids, and the county has reopened bidding on GovDeals through 5 p.m. September 18 at the same $35.41 million reserve. Nearly 50,000 views and visits on the listing produced inquiries from development buyers as far as overseas, according to Miami Today, but not one qualifying offer.
Why it matters
A three-week window at an unchanged number is the county publicly testing whether $35.41 million was ever the market price for 73 W. Flagler St., not whether buyers exist. They clearly do: the traffic says so. What nobody has done is put money behind a reuse plan for a 28-story, 1928 landmark bound by historic-preservation rules on its exterior and several interior spaces. Zion Mass, CEO of MASS Construction and an adviser on the property, has floated a boutique hotel with restaurants and a penthouse conversion, arguing the floor plates suit lodging better than office. That is a use case, not an underwritten deal, and the gap between the two is exactly what a no-bid auction exposes. The county already walked away from one negotiated path: Russell Galbut’s GFO Acquisitions LLC had been in direct talks to buy the building before commissioners pivoted to a public auction.
The numbers
The reserve is unchanged at $35.41 million with a $100,000 bid deposit required to participate. Against the building’s roughly 265,000 square feet, that floor prices out to about $133.60 per square foot for a nearly 100-year-old, 28-story tower in the South Florida core, before a dollar of preservation-compliant renovation, tenant improvement or repositioning capital is spent. Any bidder has three weeks, not three months, to underwrite that math against a hotel, office, or mixed-use conversion and put a deposit down.
What’s next
Bidding runs through 5 p.m. September 18 on GovDeals, and the county has signaled before that it will push the clock again if a bid lands near the deadline. Any winning bid still needs the county commission and mayor to sign off before the sale closes, so a bid alone will not end the story. Watch whether GFO Acquisitions or another named buyer re-enters now that the field is public and the price is fixed.