“We Have the Funding and Won’t Take Years to Deliver” — How Redwood’s Claude Pepper Park Deal Turned Into $16.4 Million (And Counting)
On the night North Miami selected Redwood CP Dev, LLC to redevelop Claude Pepper Park, a City National Bank representative testified that financing was already in place — and Redwood’s own attorney told the council, twice, on the record, that the project didn’t need public money and wouldn’t be back asking for any. Three and a half years later, the record shows something different: $16.4 million in confirmed City and Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) commitments, a public incentive quietly swapped for a bigger guaranteed one with no appropriation safeguard attached, the entire grant reassigned to a new company partway through — and $86,000 in campaign contributions from Redwood-affiliated LLCs and their attorneys flowing to the political committees of three officials who voted “yes” at every turn, in a town small enough that those checks are hard to write off as coincidence.
Laid end to end, it’s public money moving on one track and campaign checks moving on a parallel one — with the same small set of names on both. In a metro area of six million, that might wash out as noise. In a city of roughly 60,000, it doesn’t. Is this what people mean by “pay to play”? By “quid pro quo”? Read the timeline below and decide for yourself.
Here’s what the public record actually shows.
The Pitch
https://files.catbox.moe/mz0fix.mp4
Redwood was awarded the Claude Pepper Park redevelopment on November 18, 2022, after winning RFP No. 70-21-22 — a project covering improvements to the park itself, renovation of the Joe Celestin Center, and development of an adjacent vacant site. The council selected Redwood by a 5-0 vote.
That same night, during Redwood’s presentation on the Claude Pepper Park proposal, Chris Damian of City National Bank testified that the project’s financing was in hand. Shortly after, Redwood’s attorney went further, telling the council the project could move forward “without waiting years for government subsidies,” would “not need city funds to get started,” and — stated twice for emphasis — would “not require public subsidies from the city” and would “not return later asking for additional funding.”
The Money
Whatever was said that night, here’s what actually followed:
- November 26, 2024
The North Miami CRA board approved an $8,000,000 infrastructure grant, plus a Tax Increment Recapture Incentive of 50% of the project’s future property tax revenue, running for approximately 20 years, until the CRA itself sunsets.
- April 22, 2025
The City Council approved Resolution 2025-R-99, authorizing up to $8.34 million in additional rent/housing subsidies over 12 years.
- May 16, 2025
The City executed a Housing Subsidy Agreement: $695,000 a year for 12 years, which both the City’s and the CRA’s own paperwork describe as totaling $8,400,000 — provided “in lieu of” the 50% TIF recapture the CRA had approved five months earlier.
- June 10, 2025
The CRA board took up a resolution to formally rescind that now-redundant TIF incentive (while leaving the $8 million infrastructure grant untouched). It was tabled, 5-0, with no discussion reflected anywhere in the minutes.
- July 8, 2025
The same resolution came back. It didn’t get resolved that night either, based on the packet available.
- June 23, 2026
Nearly a year after it was first raised, the board finally passed the rescission, unanimously, as Resolution 2026-13. But that resolution did something else at the same time: it reassigned the entire $8 million infrastructure grant agreement from Redwood CP Dev, LLC to a newly formed entity, Redwood CP Holdings I, LLC — bringing in an outside investor member, CREA Claude Pepper 1, LLC, along the way.
Add it up, and the confirmed total from the City and the CRA combined comes to $16,400,000 — not counting whatever the rescinded TIF incentive might have been worth over 20 years before it was swapped out.
| Source | Confirmed Amount | Status Today |
|---|---|---|
| CRA Infrastructure Grant (Res. 2024-024) | $8,000,000 | Active — now held by Redwood CP Holdings I, LLC |
| City Housing/Rent Subsidy (Res. 2025-R-99) | $8,400,000 | Active |
| CRA TIF Recapture (50%, ~20 yrs) | Variable, not fixed | Rescinded 6/23/2026 |
| Total confirmed, City + CRA | $16,400,000 | |
Beyond the City and CRA
The $16.4 million above only counts what the City and the CRA put on the table directly. By other accounts, Redwood’s total public benefit runs considerably higher:
- $7.6 million in an additional grant from the Housing Authority
- A $3 million loan, also from the Housing Authority
- $112 million in Multi-Family Mortgage Revenue Bonds (MMRB) — tax-exempt bond financing that Redwood is obligated to repay from project revenue, but which comes with below-market interest and access to capital most private developers can’t get on their own
- The land itself, leased to Redwood for $1 a year for the first 11 years, stepping up to $100,000 a year after that — a fraction of what a comparable North Miami assemblage would command on the open market.
Layer the Housing Authority grant and loan on top of the $16.4 million already confirmed with the City and CRA, and Redwood’s direct cash benefit approaches $27 million — before even accounting for what a market-rate ground lease would have been worth, or the value of tax-exempt financing on a $112 million bond issue.
Why the Swap Isn’t Actually a Win
It would be easy to read the June 2026 vote as the board finally clawing back a bad deal. It isn’t, quite. The CRA’s own resolution says the $8.4 million City subsidy was accepted “in lieu of” the TIF incentive — meaning Redwood had already effectively traded one funding mechanism for another well before the board’s paperwork caught up. And the trade itself is worth sitting with: a TIF rebate only pays out as the project’s assessed value actually rises — it’s tied to real performance. A fixed $695,000-a-year subsidy is a guaranteed City obligation no matter how the project performs. Rescinding the TIF didn’t save taxpayers money; it just closed the loop on an incentive Redwood no longer needed once it had a better, guaranteed one in hand.
A Financing Structure That Skips a Standard Safeguard
There’s something missing from the Housing Subsidy Agreement itself — reviewed directly from the copy posted on the City’s own website — that’s worth flagging on its own.
Florida law generally lets a municipality sign contracts that run past the current council’s term, but it doesn’t let one council bind a future council’s budget outright. Florida Statute §166.241(2) requires that municipal expenditures be made “in pursuance of budgeted appropriations,” and Florida Attorney General opinions on multi-year municipal contracts have consistently read that to mean each year’s payment still has to survive that year’s actual budget appropriation — which is why cities routinely write multi-year financial commitments with a “subject to annual appropriation” clause. That clause is what keeps a long-term subsidy from functioning like unauthorized debt: it gives a future council the legal ability to decline to fund it if circumstances change, rather than being locked in no matter what.
North Miami’s Housing Subsidy Agreement with Redwood contains no such clause. A direct review of the agreement text turns up zero mentions of “appropriation,” “budget,” or anything conditioning the payments on future council approval. Instead, Section 3 commits the City, in plain terms, to twelve annual payments of $695,000 — a fixed $8.4 million obligation running through 2039 or later, described exactly like any other contractual debt the City owes, not as a subsidy contingent on the City having and choosing to allocate the money each year. The agreement also contains no default, clawback, or termination provisions tied to Redwood actually delivering the affordable units, hitting construction milestones, or maintaining income restrictions beyond the generic instruction to maintain them “throughout the Term” — the only enforcement mechanism spelled out is a general breach-and-sue clause available to either side.
To be clear about what this is and isn’t: this isn’t a claim that the agreement is illegal or that the City’s debt limit has been formally violated — that’s a legal conclusion for the City Attorney, the City’s outside bond counsel, or a court, not this piece. What it is: a fixed, 12-year, $8.4 million City payment obligation that appears to have been signed without the standard “subject to annual appropriation” language that would let a future council walk away from it if the money isn’t there, and without any performance strings attached to the developer’s side of the bargain. That combination — a guaranteed long-term liability with no appropriation escape valve and no clawback if the developer underdelivers — is exactly the kind of structure municipal finance officers are trained to avoid, and it deserves an independent legal and financial review before the first payment goes out in 2027, not after.
A New Owner, Same $8 Million
The other thing buried in the June 2026 resolution: the $8 million grant obligation didn’t stay with the company the CRA originally negotiated with. It was assigned to Redwood CP Holdings I, LLC, a new entity, with CREA Claude Pepper 1, LLC stepping in as an investor member. (The “CREA” naming pattern is typical of tax-credit equity investors — if that’s what this is, it would say a lot about what affordability commitments now actually run with the project, but that hasn’t been independently confirmed.) David Burstyn, who registered as a lobbyist for Redwood in September 2024 and appears in press coverage as a company co-founder, is named in the control provisions of the restructured deal alongside Brian Sidman.
What obligations, if any, carried over to the new entity — construction deadlines, affordability requirements, security for the public’s $8 million — isn’t spelled out in the resolution summary. That’s worth a public records request on its own.
The Lobbying Timeline
Redwood’s registered lobbying activity lines up closely with the funding approvals: David A. Burstyn registered in September 2024, Andre Dominique Pierre in December 2024, and Philippe Bien-Aime — the same Philippe Bien-Aime who served as Mayor and chaired the very council that selected Redwood in 2022 — registered as a lobbyist for Redwood in April 2025, weeks before the City’s housing subsidy agreement was executed. A mayor who presided over a developer’s selection later registering as that developer’s paid lobbyist, timed just ahead of the developer’s next major funding approval, is exactly the kind of revolving-door arrangement municipal ethics codes exist to catch — whatever the eventual answer on whether any rule was technically broken.
Money to the Board Members Who Voted Yes
While the CRA board was sitting on Redwood’s incentive package, the Redwood ownership group was writing checks to the political committees of three of the officials who kept voting “yes” on it — Mary Estimé-Irvin, Kassandra Timothe, and Pierre Frantz Charles — according to Florida Division of Elections campaign finance records.
To Kassandra Timothe’s political committee, “Voices of Change”:
https://files.catbox.moe/3momw3.pdf
| Contributor | Address | Date | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Redwood Dev Co, LLC | 3921 Alton Rd Ste 439, Miami Beach | 5/4/2026 | $5,000 |
| Redwood CP Holdings I, LLC | 3921 Alton Rd Ste 439, Miami Beach | 5/7/2026 | $5,000 |
| Magasi Redwood Urban LC, LLC | 529 West 41st St, Miami Beach | 5/7/2026 | $5,000 |
| Subtotal | $15,000 | ||
To Mary Estimé-Irvin’s political committee, “Building A Better Tomorrow Today”:
https://files.catbox.moe/iqclx0.pdf
| Contributor | Address | Date | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Magasi Redwood Urban AC, LLC | 529 West 41st St Ste 439, Miami Beach | 11/20/2025 | $5,000 |
| Redwood Legacy TTM, LLC | 3921 Alton Rd Ste 439, Miami Beach | 11/20/2025 | $5,000 |
| Redwood Lime Grove, LLC | 529 West 41st St Ste 439, Miami Beach | 11/20/2025 | $5,000 |
| Redwood Mariners Cove, LLC | 529 West 41st St Ste 439, Miami Beach | 11/20/2025 | $5,000 |
| Magasi Redwood Urban LC, LLC | 529 West 41st St, Miami Beach | 5/22/2026 | $2,500 |
| Redwood Legacy TTM, LLC | 3921 Alton Rd Ste 439, Miami Beach | 5/22/2026 | $2,500 |
| Subtotal | $25,000 | ||
To Pierre Frantz Charles’s political committee, “Together For A Brighter Tomorrow”:
https://files.catbox.moe/lipgk5.pdf
| Contributor | Address | Date | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Redwood Mosaic Development, LLC | 3921 Alton Rd Ste 439, Miami Beach | 6/18/2024 | $4,000 |
| Redwood Westview South, LLC | 3921 Alton Rd Ste 439, Miami Beach | 6/18/2024 | $4,000 |
| Redwood Mosaic Dev, LLC | 3921 Alton Rd Ste 439, Miami Beach | 10/2/2024 | $5,000 |
| Redwood RE Management, LLC | 3921 Alton Rd Ste 439, Miami Beach | 10/2/2024 | $5,000 |
| Redwood Westview East, LLC | 3921 Alton Rd Ste 439, Miami Beach | 10/2/2024 | $5,000 |
| Redwood Westview South, LLC | 3921 Alton Rd Ste 439, Miami Beach | 10/2/2024 | $5,000 |
| Redwood Mosaic Dev LLC | 545 NW 26th St Ste 620, Miami | 10/17/2024 | $4,000 |
| Redwood Westview East LLC | 545 NW 26th St Ste 620, Miami | 10/17/2024 | $5,000 |
| Redwood Westview South, LLC | 545 NW 26th St Ste 620, Miami | 10/17/2024 | $4,000 |
| Subtotal | $41,000 | ||
Combined, the Redwood ownership group put $86,000 into the political committees of three sitting officials — city council members who also sit on the NMCRA board, and who voted on the City’s own funding items for this project as well as the CRA’s.
First, two of the eighteen contributions above are literally the Claude Pepper Park counterparty by name — Redwood Dev Co, LLC (the original 2024 grant recipient) and Redwood CP Holdings I, LLC (the entity the grant was assigned to in 2026), both of which gave to Timothe’s committee. Every other contribution — to Timothe, Estimé-Irvin, or Charles — comes from a different Redwood-family LLC: Magasi Redwood Urban, Redwood Legacy TTM, Redwood Lime Grove, Redwood Mariners Cove, Redwood Mosaic Dev, Redwood Mosaic Development, Redwood RE Management, and Redwood Westview East and South. None of them is the Claude Pepper Park entity itself, but every one of them shares one of a small handful of addresses used elsewhere in this deal by Redwood CP Dev and Redwood CP Holdings I — Suite 439 at 3921 Alton Rd or 529 West 41st Street in Miami Beach, or 545 NW 26th Street in Miami — making clear they’re part of the same ownership group, not an unrelated coincidence of a common surname.
Second, and this is the line that matters most for Timothe: Redwood CP Holdings I, LLC gave her committee $5,000 on May 7, 2026 — seven weeks before she voted, on June 23, 2026, to approve assigning the $8 million NMCRA infrastructure grant to that exact same entity. That’s not a contribution from “the Redwood family of companies” in the abstract; that’s the specific LLC that benefited from her vote, paying into her political committee weeks beforehand. Whatever the intent, the sequence — the entity that stood to gain writing a check to the decision-maker’s committee shortly before the vote that let it gain — is precisely the kind of timing that ethics rules are written to make officials avoid, whether or not anyone involved believes it influenced anything.
Third, for Charles: all nine of his contributions landed between June and October 2024 — every single one of them before November 26, 2024, when the CRA approved Redwood’s original $8 million grant and 50% TIF recapture, the first Redwood item on record with Charles seated on the board. Put another way, $41,000 came in during the five months leading up to his first vote on this project, not scattered randomly across his time in office.
There’s a tenth contribution to Charles’s committee worth adding: on October 18, 2024 — inside that same pre-vote window — The Ben-David Law Firm, PL gave $5,000. The firm’s namesake, Jeremy Ben-David, isn’t a Redwood LLC himself, but Florida’s own Division of Corporations lists him as the registered agent for Redwood Mariners Cove, LLC — the same LLC that gave $5,000 to Estimé-Irvin’s committee — care of the Redwood-linked office at 545 NW 26th Street, Suite 620, Miami. That’s a formal corporate role on file with the state, not just a shared address, and it’s arguably a firmer link than several of the sister-LLC contributions above. Add his $5,000 and Charles’s total climbs to $46,000, bringing the three-official combined figure to $86,000.
Estimé-Irvin, Timothe, and Charles all voted “yes” — or, in Charles’s case, moved the motion — on every Redwood-related action that came before them. Charles is the board member who personally moved to table the TIF-rescission item at the June 10, 2025 meeting, the item that then took another year to finally resolve. None of the three has publicly addressed the contributions in connection with those votes, as far as this review has found. Charles wasn’t seated yet for the original November 18, 2022 selection meeting — he was appointed to the council the following month, in December 2022 — but he has sat on both the council and the CRA board for every Redwood-related vote since.
Andre Pierre is a former two-term Mayor of North Miami (2009–2013), a practicing attorney (his own firm, the Andre Pierre Law Firm, plus 20-plus years in criminal and immigration law), and today a “Partner” and self-described political analyst and strategic consultant at a firm called NOMI Strategies — a name that reads as a direct reference to North Miami. He is the same Andre Pierre who registered as “Andre Dominique Pierre,” one of Redwood’s lobbyists, in December 2024: a former mayor turned political consultant and paid lobbyist for the very kind of major local developer his old office once had a hand in selecting.
Open Questions
Who asked for this item to be delayed, over and over? The only tabling this review has confirmed in the public minutes is June 10, 2025, when the TIF-rescission resolution was tabled 5-0 — moved by Charles, seconded by Estimé-Irvin, with no discussion recorded. The item came back July 8, 2025 and apparently wasn’t resolved that night either, and didn’t finally pass until June 23, 2026 — nearly a year after it was first raised. Who asked for each of those delays, and why, isn’t spelled out anywhere in the packets reviewed so far. That’s a public-records question worth putting to the City and the CRA directly.
Did the delays have anything to do with the payments? Redwood-affiliated LLCs contributed to Timothe’s and Estimé-Irvin’s political committees in November 2025 and May 2026 — while the rescission-and-reassignment item was still sitting unresolved on the CRA’s agenda. This piece isn’t asserting that one caused the other; the public record doesn’t establish that, and it may never be possible to prove. But the timeline is public, the contributions are public, and readers can draw their own conclusions from laying the two side by side.
Will the community actually see the project that was promised — or just another bill? The November 18, 2022 presentation described 1,568 units, senior housing, mixed-income housing, 180,000 square feet of retail, a bowling alley, a movie theater, a grocery store, a pharmacy, a fully renovated Pepper Park with a banquet hall, and a water park. A September 2024 planning filing still listed a bowling alley, water park, and banquet hall among the amenities. Redwood’s own current marketing page for the project describes a 30,000-square-foot grocery store, a 20,000-square-foot Miami Jewish Health medical center, a community pool, sports fields, a youth center, 125,000 square feet of retail, and “over 2,000 apartments” — but no bowling alley, no water park, no banquet hall, no movie theater, and no pharmacy. Their absence from a marketing page isn’t proof they’ve been dropped, but it’s a real enough gap that the City and the CRA should require Redwood to say, on the record, which of the original commitments are still in the plan before any more public money moves.
So when does this actually break ground? Redwood’s attorney told the council in November 2022 that the project wouldn’t need public funds and wouldn’t have to “wait years for government subsidies” to get started. Nearly four years later, the project has collected at least $16.4 million from the City and CRA alone, the funding agreement has been reassigned to a new entity, and Redwood’s own website — as of this review — still lists a “Q1 2025” completion date that has already passed, with no groundbreaking reported anywhere. If the point of skipping public funding was speed, it’s fair to ask what the money bought instead.
Where This Leaves Us
This is an ongoing project, and there will be more to share as additional records come in. For now, this record leaves the public with some plain questions.
Why are the developers who need these boards’ votes donating directly to the campaigns of the people casting them? Why isn’t that illegal — and should it be? The pattern documented above looks like exactly the kind of thing the State Attorney’s Office’s Public Corruption Unit exists to take a look at. And if North Miami’s elected officials have never actually been given a clear, mandatory class on what’s appropriate to accept from people and companies with business before their boards, that’s a simple fix worth demanding before the next incentive package comes up for a vote.
With this much money already banked, it’s hard not to wonder whether November’s election is already decided before residents cast a single vote. Is that fair to them, or to challengers who’ve never had a developer write them a check? In a fairer world, officials who’ve taken money from the same companies whose projects they voted on would give it back — not as an admission of anything, but because it would actually level the playing field and let residents judge candidates on the merits, not on who raised the most from the people asking them for public money.
So the question this piece leaves standing above the rest: how much does a fair election in North Miami actually cost — and who’s paying for it?
This piece will be updated as additional records come in.
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