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Among the characters involved are Meruelos and his Miami Beach neighbor, billionaire Russ Weiner
Less than two miles from the now-demolished Deauville Beach Resort, a separate story involving the Meruelo family plays out in court atop a beachfront estate on Miami Beach’s Pine Tree Drive.
Main characters include Richard Meruelo, son of developers Belinda and Homero Sr. Richard’s ex-wife, Maria Meruelo. and Rockstar Energy founder billionaire Russell Weiner. The property is 5101 Pine Tree Drive, a four-bedroom, 15,000-square-foot townhouse that sits between Weiner’s two properties.
Maria Meruelo filed for divorce from Richard Meruelo in 2018 — and again in October 2019. Although the latter case is still open, their marriage dissolved last year after Richard filed for divorce and final judgment of separation issues. Richard’s motivation for splitting the issues was to marry his girlfriend, who became pregnant in March 2019 and with whom he now has two children, his attorney Daniel Kaplan wrote in a motion filed early last year.
Kaplan, of Kaplan Loebl, argued that it would “take a lot of personal pressure out of the equation and make the case more like a business dispute.”
In addition to being part of the long-running divorce-related litigation, the Pine Tree Drive property is at the center of a foreclosure case filed in August 2021. Weiner became involved when he bought the note on the property about a month after he was sued previous lender for more than $6 million in unpaid mortgage payments. (Weiner paid more than $35 million in 2021 for the two adjacent waterfront properties at 5011 and 5111 Pine Tree Drive, which together total nearly 3.5 acres.)
However, ownership of the Meruelos home remains in dispute, following complicated legal dealings. Maria, a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker, is listing the home at 5101 Pine Tree Drive for $22 million. It has been on the market since May of last year and is visible on Realtor.com.
But it was actually sold last January, when Richard transferred ownership to a company controlled by his mother for about $7 million. Richard’s transfer of ownership of the property is being contested in court, with two divorce and foreclosure hearings set for March 3.
Kaplan said the company that bought it “saved the day by cashing in on the property,” rather than allowing it to sell for “a fraction of its fair market value” at a foreclosure sale. (In the foreclosure process, the borrower can “buy back” the property if they pay off the loan and associated fees.)
Weiner’s attorneys, Matthew Kramer and William Riley, argued in a Jan. 19 motion that because Meruelo transferred the property to his mother’s LLC before the foreclosure auction and before the property was redeemed, the redemption is invalid. Further complicating the situation, on January 25, the clerk certified that Richard had complied with the final foreclosure order.
The litigation has been delayed. In divorce alone, attorneys have filed nearly 3,000 docket entries.
“Basically what we have here is a scorched earth lawsuit case,” said Kaplan, Richard’s attorney. “Ex-wife refuses to move on with her life.”
In late 2018, Maria Meruelo acquired sole ownership of a separate Miami Beach home the couple previously shared at 5727 Pine Tree Drive.
Divorce filings show Maria was trying to sell the 5101 Pine Tree Drive property to developer Andres Isaias for $18.4 million. According to a request filed on January 13, her lawyer asked the court, for the fourth time, to enforce the sale agreement the former couple had with Isaiah and to revoke the transfer of the property redeemed by Richard Meruelo.
Isaiah declined to comment.
In a filing, Maria’s attorney cites Miami-Dade Judge George Sarduy’s May 16 ruling barring Richard from transferring marital property without a court order or permission from Maria. Her lawyer calls the January transfer to the Belinda Meruelo entity “fraudulent.”
“Just as we said and feared would happen, the ex-husband sold property 5101 at the foreclosure sale for pennies on the dollar,” states the Jan. 13 emergency motion filed by Melissa Kanoff, an attorney in the office of Raymond Rafool. Rafool represents Maria Meruelo.
Richard Meruelo “plays by his own rules and believes he is above the law,” the filing claims. It goes a step further, asking the judge to put Richard Meruelo in jail for failing to comply with the amended sale order.
The Meruelo family is known locally for their real estate in Miami Beach. The family owns the Deauville Beach Resort site at 6701 Collins Ave., where a proposed rezoning failed to pass in November. The historic hotel was then mostly demolished. Belinda and Homero’s grown children, including son Alex in Los Angeles, Richard in Miami Beach and LA, and the late Homero Jr., who died in November, are all involved in the real estate industry.
Deauville Associates, led by Belinda, owns the Deauville waterfront location. In Maria Meruelo’s divorce complaint, she said Richard was a vice president and director of a Deauville entity and claimed he was “using his status” and control over his mother to turn the companies into “mere tools of his own personal plans.”
Last year, Deauville Associates entered into a contract to sell the property to Miami Dolphins owner and Related Companies billionaire developer Steve Ross for half a billion dollars.
The Meruelos had already been accused of intentionally letting the hotel fall into disrepair, to the point where it was declared unsafe by the city and ordered torn down by the same judge who oversaw the trial over the Surfside collapse.
By summer, Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber brought in an unsolicited proposal from Ross to redevelop the site. The bid is contingent on Ross getting a voter-approved increase in floor area ratio — or the overall size of the project — to accommodate his Frank Gehry-designed plans for an Equinox condo and hotel development.
While all this was in the works, the Meruelos lined up properties to buy, including the historic Casablanca resort in Miami Beach.
Prior to the unsolicited bid for the Deauville site, the Meruelo-led entity collected millions of dollars in fines from the city of Miami Beach. In December, prominent Miami architect Coby Karp sued to enforce a lien for unpaid work in Deauville totaling more than $130,000. Karp’s work began in early 2018 and was completed in October 2021, according to the complaint.
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