5 Questions With Dev Motwani of Merrimac Ventures

As the Miami housing market boom continues, Merrimac Ventures has been selling South Florida condos almost as quickly as it can build them.

The company, led by brothers Nitin and Dev Motwani, has sold most of the short-term rental units at its Miami Worldcenter development. And now Merrimac Ventures is focusing on luxury units in Fort Lauderdale Beach, Pompano Beach, and Telluride, Colo.

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Commercial Observer: You’ve got more than 1,000 units under development in two towers in Downtown Miami, but one of your newest projects is on a much smaller scale.

Dev Motwani: Bungalow East is a boutique condo building with 34 units. Once you get off of the water in Fort Lauderdale Beach, there’s a lot of demand for luxury living, but it’s really about getting the right mix. 

We’ve owned this site since 1994. We’ve developed all around this property, starting with the Conrad Hilton and most recently the Four Seasons. We kept this site because we knew all the great things that were happening in this area. We haven’t even opened our sales center, and we’ve already got a handful of units sold.

The units are in the $2 million to $4 million range, versus our oceanfront units, which are starting in the $4 million to $6 million range. At Bungalow, these are units that have great views, great design, but a price point that’s a little more attainable. We’ve done really expansive balconies. It creates an indoor-outdoor living experience. The building is really designed to maximize the outdoors and views of the waterway. And we activated the rooftop, so everyone is able to enjoy the best views in the building. 

Nitin and I grew up in this area. This is our childhood neighborhood. We really helped curate this neighborhood over the past 40 years.

You’re developing the Waldorf Astoria in Pompano Beach. How did Pompano become a luxury market? 

I’ve got to be honest: If you asked me 10 years ago if I’d be doing Waldorf’s first-ever standalone residences in Pompano Beach, I’m not sure I would have been that ambitious. 

We bought the site back in 2011. We’ve been patient. We’ve gotten to know the community and the neighbors. Pompano Beach had a reputation for being anti-development. But when we got to town, and with our reputation for what we’ve done in Fort Lauderdale Beach, we found the community very welcoming. The city was making a lot of investments in infrastructure.

We waited as the market matured. We proved out that there was a higher-end market that wanted to be in that area. We did a Class A apartment building that was getting the highest rents in Broward County when we opened it. That opened people’s eyes to the market in Pompano. 

There hadn’t been a lot of new development, so nobody had tested the price points. Pompano has got an amazingly wide beach. It’s one of the widest beaches in South Florida. And it’s not as dense, so we don’t see as much traffic as in Fort Lauderdale.

Patience sounds like a theme in your projects. Is it hard to buy a piece of dirt and then be patient?

It can be. It all depends on a number of things. Number one is how you’re capitalized, and whether you have partners with a long-term outlook. 

Also, we don’t just sit around and wait. We get active in the community. We support the politicians and the government and what they’re doing with infrastructure. That has been our family MO. It worked for us in Fort Lauderdale Beach, and then with Miami Worldcenter, and now with Pompano Beach. 

In Fort Lauderdale Beach, my family bought hotels at the peak of the market, not knowing that the city was about to end spring break. So my family was forced to get involved in the community, get involved in the tourism industry. We lived in the hotels, and Nitin and I saw how hard our parents worked.

Have you experienced times when the patience didn’t pay off?

I bought a site in Dania Beach for a multifamily development, and I had to wait for the capital markets to catch up with my vision. That’s a nice way of saying I had to wait longer than I would have liked. But now the market has caught up with our vision. We target places where we can see the demographics and the demand. We’ve been very fortunate.

You’re doing a Four Seasons condo project in Telluride, which is outside your geographic comfort zone. Any challenges arise from tackling a new market?

It’s far away, so the big challenge is time. Nitin and I like to be very personally involved in each of our projects, so I’ve taken over two dozen trips to Telluride since 2018. Most people say boo-hoo, because it’s obviously a very nice place to visit. But we’ve been getting to know the politicians and the neighbors. It’s such a special place, and such a special opportunity.

Telluride and South Florida used to be second-home markets. What happened during COVID was that people realized both South Florida and Telluride can be primary markets. In Telluride, there’s very limited land for development. We have a very unique site in a market that is very hard to build in, with very little developable land. Prices start at $4 million, and we have penthouses that are north of $30 million. The typical price is in the $6 to $10 million range.

Jeff Ostrowski can be reached at jostrowski@commercialobserver.com.