Haute 100 Update Miami: Jorge Perez’s Related Group Pulls Out Of Island Gardens

We’ve never seen a project with as many false starts as Island Gardens on Watson Island.  What began as a luxury condo project with a deep-water marina back in 2008, exploded into a mega-project the second time around with malls, Shangri-La hotel and of course, condos. The Related Group, which has a host of hot new projects in the pipeline, had partnered with Island Gardens original developer Mehmet Bayraktar of Flagstone Group. Now they’ve withdrawn, now Flagstone will be left to look for new ones. Will the project get scrapped a second time? We hope not. Miami Beach could always use a place for mega-yachts and some shimmering new condo towers. But perhaps the retail aspect should be toned down significantly to make this bird fly. Just a thought.