Long after he built the Champlain Towers
South in Surfside, developer Nathan Reiber became a partner
in a company that converted a 377-unit apartment complex in
Coconut Creek into condominiums.
While that project did not suffer the same tragic fate as
the Surfside collapse, it did not end well for the investors
or for the dozens of buyers who soon found themselves in
foreclosure.
Reiber spent the latter part of his career as a partner in a
business that was brought down by bankruptcy, foreclosure
and accusations of underhanded financial dealing.
The South Florida Sun Sentinel looked at Reiber’s corporate
registrations, official records in Broward and Palm Beach
counties, civil court filings and newspaper archives to
determine whether Reiber, who died in 2014, developed any
buildings in the two counties.
The investigation found no evidence that Reiber, who moved
to Miami Beach in the 1970s and became immersed in business
and civic life there for most of his remaining days, was
involved in any construction projects in Broward or Palm
Beach counties.
William M. Friedman, the architect of record for Reiber’s
three Champlain Towers projects, is credited in local
newspaper archives as designing just a handful of low-rise
buildings, mostly apartment houses, during the 1960s and
1970s. Several of those have already been replaced by newer
structures.
Reiber’s stint as a high-rise developer in the mid-1980s
seemed to be short-lived. Before and after he completed his
tower projects, records show that he made his living
primarily as a real estate investor. Along the way, he had
many partners.
Reiber and partners started as apartment investors
In he early 1970s, he formed partnerships with other
Canadian businessmen to buy apartment buildings in
Miami-Dade County. South Florida was enjoying one of its
many real estate booms, and the partners believed rising
rent prices would deliver healthy profits. To complete the
transactions, they formed companies with names like Damir
Holdings, Irber Holdings, Citron Estates (after partner Max
Citron) and Reiber Estates.
Eventually, Reiber formed or was a principal in 30 Florida
companies, according to the state’s Division of Corporations
online database.
Real estate transaction stories in the Miami Herald reported
purchases by Reiber and his partners of at least three
apartment complexes on North Kendall Drive between 1973 and
1974. But recession hit the country in 1974 and the
apartment market collapsed, a Herald story reported.
The partners sold one of the apartment complexes in 1977 for
less than its 1973 purchase price, while another was sold at
pubic auction to satisfy debts, the paper reported.
Reiber retired from Ontario, Canada, to Miami Beach in the
late 1970s, according to a 2014 obituary, and began
investing in properties there. He announced the first of the
three Champlain Towers projects, again with Canadian
partners, in 1980. The first two towers, Champlain Towers
South and Champlain Towers North, were completed by 1982.
A third tower, Champlain Towers East, wouldn’t be completed
until 1994 as the partners were slowed by yet another
recession and became embroiled in lawsuits with contractors
and battles with the city of Surfside over the project’s
scope and distance from the shoreline. It was his third and
final building, according to a recent Miami Herald story.
Reiber family invests in condo conversions
State corporate records list Reiber and his daughter, Jill
Meland, as managing members of two companies, Everglades
East Associates LLC and Everglades South Associates LLC,
along with Robert J. Wolfarth and his son, Robert J.
Wolfarth II.
Official records of Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Broward
counties show no transactions by either company.
But the Wolfarths had by then built a reputation as “condo
converters” — businessmen who purchased apartment complexes,
allowed leases to expire, and then converted the complexes
into condominiums.
A 2001 Miami Herald story reported complaints by more than a
dozen residents of a former Miami Beach apartment house that
the Wolfarths had converted the year before. The residents
said the Wolfarths told them they wouldn’t get their
security deposits back because they damaged their apartments
— which the residents denied.
None of the Reiber family members show up again with the
Wolfarths in any other company registered in the state’s
Division of Corporation database.
But court records show they had continued to do business
together, as investors or managing members of at least two
other Wolfarth-fronted companies.
Nathan Reiber, his wife, Carolee, daughter Jill Meland and
her husband Mark Meland — a real estate attorney with the
Miami-based firm Meland Budwick — were named with the
Wolfarths and two companies as defendants in a 2008
foreclosure suit against Club Caribe, a Coconut Creek-based
condominum complex.
Neither Robert Wolfarth Jr. nor Mark Meland responded to
emails and text messages seeking comment for this report.
Marketing ‘a little gem’
Records show that the Wolfarths in 2005 purchased what was
then called Coconut Creek Apartments, a 14-building,
377-unit complex near the Sawgrass Expressway interchange at
State Road 7, and converted the apartments into
condominiums.
It was the height of the nation’s real estate boom, and
South Florida real estate in particular was selling at a
fever pitch, pushing up home prices to unsustainable levels
within just a few years.
But that wasn’t yet known in 2005, and the Wolfarths’ new
company, Club Caribe Associates LLC, aggressively marketed
the former apartments to buyers who were being left behind
by the rising prices.
A South Florida Sun Sentinel ad in May 2006 touted: “Across
from prestigious Parkland. Adjacent to a protected nature
preserve. From a simply unbelievable $159,900!”
In smaller type, the pitch continued by telling readers that
Club Caribe, “a little gem of a community,” is “tucked away
at the end of a long and winding road.”
And then the ad revealed that Club Caribe consisted of one-
and two-bedroom residences “with qualify finishes, great
amenities and almost-too-hard-to-believe prices.” What the
ad didn’t reveal were the unit sizes — 846 square feet,
1,015 square feet, and 1,130 square feet.
Nevertheless, Broward County official records reveal the
units sold rapidly in what turned out to be a vastly
overpriced market. More than 200 of the 377 units sold
between April 2006 and December 2007, at prices ranging from
$139,900 to $298,000.
It wasn’t long afterward before the housing boom came to an
end. Only another 30 or so units sold in 2008.
From 2007 to 2010, new owners of Club Caribe condos were hit
with 179 foreclosure suits. While foreclosures came at a
rapid pace after the 2008 financial collapse, 179 suits in a
377-unit complex is “outrageous,” said Douglas Jeffrey, a
Miami Lakes attorney who defended borrowers in foreclosure
suits after the housing market crash.
One of the only reasons such a large percentage of
foreclosures could have happened so quickly after homeowners
bought their new units was if their lenders allowed them to
sign contracts without properly evaluating their ability to
make their mortgage payments — a common issue that helped
trigger the Great Recession, Jeffrey said.
By the time they were served with their foreclosure suits,
they likely didn’t know how to defend themselves, Jeffrey
said. “These were people who didn’t know what they were
doing,” he said, “so they just let their properties go.”
Ocean Bank, which lent Wolfarth $59 million to finance the
apartment complex purchase in 2005, filed its own
foreclosure suit in December 2008 against the Wolfarths,
Club Caribe Associates Inc., South Bay Plantation Associates
and the four Reiber family members, seeking all unsold Club
Caribe units.
Lawsuits shed light on involvement
On April 9, 2010, the Wolfarths filed for Chapter 7
bankruptcy protection from creditors on behalf of another of
his troubled companies, Village at Dadeland Associates LLC.
Units in that condominum complex, on Southwest 82nd Street
in Miami, had been taken over by a receiver in June 2009 and
the Wolfarths were ordered to turn over title to 15 units
after a judge determined their company had stopped paying
maintenance fees for the units while still pocketing rent
payments.
The bankruptcy petition filed in federal court listed Nathan
and Carolee Reiber and Mark and Jill Meland as unsecured
creditors. Each couple invested $1 million with the
Wolfarths, and each owned a 25% share of the company.
Yet, that doesn’t explain why the Reibers were sued, along
with the Wolfarths, by the bank that financed the Club
Caribe loan, and Broward County Circuit Court’s online
database does not store images of complaints filed prior to
2010.
A 2012 federal court complaint filed in the Village at
Dadeland Associates bankruptcy case pointed to a possible
reason why.
The Reibers and Melands, the complaint said, went into the
partnership with the Wolfarths in 2004 “for the purpose of
condominum conversions and to get in on the real estate
bubble.”
To avoid exposing revenues from condo sales to their
creditor, Ocean Bank, the company “transferred numerous sums
of money ... from the sale of the condominium units straight
from the closing agent to [the Wolfarths], or for the
benefit of the [Wolfarths] and all other Managing Members,”
the complaint states
The transfers, the complaint states, “were all a part of a
design and scheme to defraud the creditors ... and indeed
did defraud said creditors.”
Despite the accusations, no one faced criminal charges.
Charges of wrongdoing in real estate were rampant after the
economic crash, but most cases were resolved outside of the
criminal system.
Both the Club Caribe lawsuit and Village at Dadeland
bankruptcy case, which did not name the Reiber family
members as defendants, were settled. The Reibers and the
Melands were removed as defendants in the Club Caribe
foreclosure suit before it was resolved.
Control of Club Caribe was transferred to a receiver, who
sold it to a company formed by Isram Realty Group for $8.2
million. And today, Club Caribe is again operating as an
apartment complex, with Isram owning 200 of its units,
according to a Broward County property search.
It’s tucked away just east of State Road 7, north of the
Sawgrass Expressway and next to a Hampton Inn and Suites.
And if you zoom into an aerial map on the Club Caribe
Apartments website, you’ll see the “preserve” is still
there.