After nearly a hundred years of legal proceedings and courtroom dramas including Prohibition-era mobsters and a socialite murder mystery, downtown Miami's Dade County Courthouse is now officially for sale.
Miami-Dade County released an invitation to bid on the aging neoclassical tower, one of only a handful in the city, for $52.3 million. The county is selling the property “as is” and asking for bidders with “experience and the capacity to own and operate a large-scale historic property” according national and local regulations, the document said. county makes “no warranty, express or implied, as to quality, size, or description of the property, or its fitness for any use or purpose,” and won't accept financing or contingencies in any bid.
Separately, a county memo angles the tower as a potential adaptive reuse project, citing the $32 million the county has spent over the last seven years making repairs to the nearly 100-year-old tower. The memo outlines specific historical features of the tower, alongside its strategic location at 73 W Flagler St., directly adjacent to the Miami Metrorail and Metromover mass transit systems.
The sale comes as the county nears completion on a new $267 million, 25-story courthouse being developed by Plenary Group. The county plans to relocate its full-time civil courthouse operations to the new facility upon completion, expected sometime later this year.
When it opened in 1928, the Dade County Courthouse, standing at 361 feet high, was the tallest building in the South, and the longtime home of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit of Florida, HistoryMiami Museum's resident historian, Paul George, told CoStar News in an interview.
In a city known for constantly reinventing itself, the tower stands as a testament to the sometimes overlooked history of Miami, said George. The Dade County Courthouse hosted headline-grabbing cases that included the three-day trial of notorious mobster Al Capone for perjury in 1930. In the 1960s, it hosted the trial of model-turned-socialite Candy Mossler and nephew Melvin Lane Powers, accused of killing Mossler’s husband, that grabbed national headlines. In both cases, the accused were acquitted.
The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989, and had its facade repaired in a major $20 million renovation between 2013 and 2016. Structural issues identified in 2021 would lead to its evacuation, however. “They have only four working bathrooms for a building that big,” said George. "It's fragile with age."
Despite its history, the tower, alongside much of the rest of downtown Miami, has become increasingly derelict while other neighborhoods have flourished like Brickell and Wynwood. The Miami Downtown Development Authority's Flagler Street Beautification project has shut down multiple streets in the city's historic downtown core since construction began in 2021, and construction is expected to run through next year. In the meantime, the area remains mostly dormant, said George.
Whether the tower will remain a fixture of downtown once it finally opens back up remains to be seen. Although the tower is part of the Downtown Miami Historic District, historical preservation efforts, according to George, have seen a mix of victories and defeats. Either way, "Whoever buys [the courthouse] is going to have to spend a lot of money in restoration." George said. "I'm keeping my fingers crossed."
A pre-bid conference is scheduled on July 15. Bids are due by Sept. 4 at 2:00 p.m.