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Riviera Beach CRA pauses Marina negotiations, seeks outside real-estate counsel
Summary
After months of development talks, the Riviera Beach Community Redevelopment Agency voted to pause direct negotiations over the Marina Village master lease and to solicit experienced real-estate law teams to represent the CRA in the deal, citing the project’s scale and legal complexity.
The Riviera Beach Community Redevelopment Agency voted on June 11 to halt direct negotiations with the Marina Village developer and to seek outside legal counsel with experience negotiating large mixed-use public-property deals.
The vote followed a lengthy debate about whether the CRA’s existing consultants have the “firepower” to negotiate a 99-year master lease for waterfront property that one commissioner said could underpin projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Vice Chair Spiritis and other commissioners urged the board to add outside real-estate law specialists and other senior advisers to protect residents’ interests.
Nick Finelli of Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL), the CRA’s longtime planning and development consultant, said JLL has worked on the Marina Village assignments since 2021 and had helped secure prior ground leases and RFP work. The board approved a limited, four-month extension of JLL’s contract by a 3–2 vote, but then voted 4–1 to issue a request for qualifications (RFQ) to hire a real-estate law firm with experience negotiating high-value mixed-use deals on public land. The CRA also voted 4–1 to pause further negotiation with the developer until that team is in place.
Chair Gton said the property is among the city’s most valuable public assets and said the CRA must “add top guns” to its negotiating table to avoid costly mistakes. Commissioner Laneir and others said bringing in specialized counsel is standard practice on projects of this size and would help the board ensure the final deal includes community benefits such as affordable housing, jobs and programming.
JLL told the board it will not invoice for Marina negotiation work while the board pauses those talks; the board directed staff to allow JLL to continue limited, hourly work on other ongoing projects. The CRA directed procurement staff to circulate the RFQ promptly and return candidate firms for board review at the next meeting.
Next steps: staff will publish the RFQ for real-estate counsel and bring shortlisted firms back to the board. Formal negotiations with the Marina developer will resume only after the CRA has selected counsel and reconvened a negotiation team.
