Home Sweet Office

I don't enjoy moving too much. After Andrew forced us to move from our "mistroyed" house, as D1 called it, to an apartment on Brickell Key, then to my in law's house, and back to the rebuilt house all in less than 2 years, I had it with moving. We've lived in Villa Wifey nearly 18 years.

The same goes for my office. We started out in the then named CenTrust Building, with its pretty night colors, but then Quantum, the office service company, went bankrupt. We were told to get out, but my master negotiator partner Paul told the company no way, and we ended up as squatters there for about 5 months, along with our new found friend Mark Seiden, and stayed rent free.

From there, we were asked to come become tenants of our bank, SunTrust, and moved into first floor space on Brickell. It was Spring of 1996. We signed a long term lease, and we had to write them every three years to exercise an option. I blew past that, and they booted us in '08 in order to put in Trulucks, which is a far better use of the space anyway. And SunTrust moved us to the 4th floor, paid all expenses, and we signed a new lease then --'08.

In 2010 our friend Stuart took over the daily operations, and his Dad Bill was charged with keeping track of the lease. He did so, especially after I cautioned him about remembering to send in those every three year option letters.  The last of those was sent in last summer -- telling SunTrust we would exercise our final option, to stay from '18 through '21.  At that point, the lease ends, and the sweetheart rent deal Paul negotiated (we currently pay about 60% of the going Brickell rate) will end.

Not so fast.  Within the past few months, we started getting calls from brokers, asking what our future plans would be. Nothing for three years, we'd respond. But they were onto something.

I learned yesterday that our sublease with the bank is contingent on their master lease with the building's owner. When we moved, the owner was Met Life, I think, but a few years ago they sold to some mysterious Brazilian consortium.  Turns out that SunTrust is getting out of dodge -- they're ditching as much of their South Florida real estate holdings as they can, as they now corporately reside in Richmond, Virginia.  In our building, I'm told, they currently hold 100K feet. They want to keep less than 20K of that, and the new owners are happy to comply.

Our building is on the water on Brickell, and on a huge parcel. When it was built, in the 80s, it made sense. But now with the Manhattanization of Miami, a 12 story building on such a big lot is a waste -- apparently the Brazilians are looking to raze the thing and put up 60 stories.

Nothing is set yet, but I spoke to my friend Alex, whose health care consulting company shares our 4th floor -- they have 75% of the space. He told me yesterday they believe we're being booted sometime in '19 -- his company is already looking to move to Dadeland or Doral, where rents are much cheaper. His company read the tea leaves months ago -- they have a contact inside the building's leasing company.

We've been in the building for 22 years. The memories have been mostly wonderful. Laughter, drama, and making some serious shekels.  We took working class Cubanas, greatly in debt, and sent them out with enough money to start their own businesses.  We made and cemented great friendships. We discovered traitorous people, and swept them from our lives.  And, like Marvin Hamlisch wrote, it is the laughter we will remember...

So for now, we'll soldier on. We have some major cases coming up, including a med mal one where the insurer for the hospital is stupidly offering only $1M. Stuart and John are set to try it in July, with our behind the scenes help, and I truly believe it will result in an EIGHT figure verdict. It will be the biggest of John and Stuart's career, and be a fitting swan song to our time in the building.

I guess in '19, we'll figure out what is next. Just yesterday, a long time consultant and friend named John visited me. I introduced him to our newest sub/sub/sub tenant Victor, who is the former head of ICE's legal department, and now handling white collar crimes. Joel brought him in , and the two of them are working together on some kind of international money laundering case -- somehow linked to El Chapo.

But Victor and Joel and Vince came in, along with John. We all busted balls for awhile -- very politically incorrectly making fun of our Irish, Italian, Mexican, and Jewish ethnicities.  Many of the jokes centered around cliches about the endowments, financial and otherwise, of our various peoples.  High level stuff...

As John and I walked to lunch, he told me he was jealous -- he was still a cop, and many of his colleagues were assholes. Wow, I thought, when you think of a true fraternity of grown men, you think a police force was the epitome of one.  No, John said -- he lacked a group of really smart and still funny "good guys" to interact with daily.

So when our leasehold ends, that's what I'll miss the most. But who knows? Maybe life holds even better stuff down the road...