Two lawsuits, a commission vote, and a pair of high-level resignations into this saga, most coverage of the fuel depot at 1 Fisher Island Drive reads like a courtroom drama. It isn't. It's a pricing problem, and Miami-Dade County has now passed on three chances to solve it for less than what it's about to cost.
For anyone living on the island, that distinction matters more than any single headline. The century-old tanks sitting on the property hold 28 million gallons of fuel. According to the complaint filed by the Fisher Island Community Association and Fisher Island Club, family homes sit 700 feet away and an elementary and middle school serving more than 160 children sits 2,000 feet away, on an island where every evacuation route runs through a boat or a ferry. That's the backdrop. The foreground is a series of numbers the county has seen, and passed on, since 2024.
Three Price Tags, One Direction
Here's the sequence, laid out plainly:
| When | Price on the Table | What the County Did |
|---|---|---|
| May 2024 | $200 million (TransMontaigne's asking price for the 9.6-acre site) | Did not make an offer |
| September 30, 2025 | $180 million (HRP Group's winning bid, finalized after a special county meeting) | Held a meeting, authorized eminent domain as a fallback, still didn't buy |
| May 2026 | $400 million ($200 million upfront, $200 million over 20 years, negotiated with HRP) | Mayor Daniella Levine Cava rejected the deal as too expensive |
| 2026 (county-commissioned estimate) | $733 million to $1.12 billion to relocate fuel operations elsewhere | Now the fallback plan |
Read that table in order and the story isn't "the county got outmaneuvered by developers." It's that every time Miami-Dade had the cheapest version of this deal in front of it, it walked away, and each subsequent number has been larger. The $400 million figure that Levine Cava called too costly in June is still less than half of the county's own low-end estimate for building fuel infrastructure somewhere else.
Why "Too Expensive" Wasn't the End of It
The June 5, 2026 announcement was not a quiet one. Levine Cava said negotiations with HRP had "concluded without an acceptable agreement" and that the county would instead pursue eminent domain to acquire the site. Two senior county officials who had spent roughly eight months negotiating the deal, Chief Operating Officer Jimmy Morales and PortMiami Director Hydi Webb, left their posts within days of the announcement.
Eleven days later, on June 16, 2026, the county commission voted to formally proceed. Commissioner Raquel Regalado cast the lone dissenting vote. Her stated reasoning, captured by The Real Deal, was blunt: she doubted the county would end up with "a wonderful property at a wonderful price," given what she'd been told by the administration.
Deputy Mayor Roy Coley offered a different kind of explanation for how the county got here. He pointed to a 1978 covenant on part of the property restricting its use to fuel-related operations, one that would require a two-thirds commission vote to lift. HRP disputes how much of the site that covenant actually covers. Either way, it's the kind of detail that suggests this was never going to be a fast transaction, covenant aside.
The Attorney Who Thinks the County Will Pay More, Not Less
Jason Brooks, a real estate attorney with Buchalter who isn't involved in the litigation, gave The Real Deal a prediction worth sitting with: if the county wins its eminent domain case, it may end up paying "substantially more" than the $400 million deal it just turned down. His reasoning is that the appraisal process, where the two sides argue over what the land and facility are actually worth, could become the biggest point of contention and "drag on for years."
Brooks thinks the county ultimately prevails on the constitutional question. Under eminent domain law, the government can take private property for public use as long as it pays just compensation. What he's less certain about is the price tag and the timeline, and those are the two things Fisher Island residents actually live with day to day.
The Clock That Actually Matters
Lawsuits and commission votes generate headlines, but the date that should be circled on any resident's calendar is 2027. Under the terms of HRP's original purchase, TransMontaigne, the depot's prior owner, retained the right to keep operating the facility under a leaseback arrangement running through 2027. That lease, not any court filing, is the closest thing to a hard deadline in this entire dispute.
Even the mechanics of eminent domain add time. Under Florida law, once the county makes a formal offer, the property owner has the right to review it for at least 30 days before anything proceeds further. Miami Today reported on July 1, 2026, that a formal offer was still "days away," meaning the 30-day clock hadn't even started as of this summer.
Put the lease and the legal process side by side and the realistic picture is a fuel depot that stays operational through this hurricane season and next, and likely beyond, regardless of how the eminent domain case resolves.
What Residents Are Actually Suing Over
It's worth separating the two fights happening in parallel, because they aren't the same lawsuit. The first, filed in January 2026, was Fisher Island's attempt to stop the county from seizing the property at all, arguing the process lacked transparency. The second, filed May 28, 2026, by FICA and the Fisher Island Club, targets HRP directly. It alleges HRP struck a secret side deal with the county worth roughly $400 million, one that would leave residents with the fuel depot still in place rather than the demolition and redevelopment HRP originally promised, including a commitment to convey four acres to FICA.
FICA Chairman James Ferraro didn't soften the accusation. He described the arrangement as HRP having "sold out our residents" and called the risk of a hurricane striking the facility "potentially an Exxon Valdez disaster." HRP's CEO, Roberto Perez, has pushed back hard in both directions, telling reporters the county's handling of the matter reflects "incompetence after years and frankly decades of failure to plan for PortMiami infrastructure," while also insisting HRP intends to move forward with its planned twin-tower project, branded One Fisher Island.
FICA represents more than 800 property owners on the island, according to court filings, and its board includes attorney Ferraro and developer Heinrich von Hanau alongside President Roberto Sosa. The Fisher Island Club, led by CEO Sase Gjorsovski, joined as a co-plaintiff in both suits. That two of the island's primary governing entities are suing the developer they once welcomed tells you how much the relationship has soured since HRP's purchase closed less than a year ago.
What to Watch From Here
For residents tracking this beyond the headlines, a few markers are worth following rather than every filing:
- The formal eminent domain offer. Once the county issues it, the 30-day review clock starts, and that's the first real indicator of how fast (or slow) this actually moves.
- The appraisal fight. If Brooks is right, this is where the real cost gets set, and where years can pass without resolution.
- HRP's public posture on One Fisher Island. The company has continued to describe the project by name in public statements, which signals it still expects to build, not just settle.
- Any commission vote on the 1978 covenant. A two-thirds vote to lift it would be a meaningful signal that the county sees a path forward with HRP rather than through condemnation.
None of this changes what the island looks and feels like this week. But it does mean the fuel depot isn't a subplot that resolves quietly by next season. It's a fixture of daily life on Fisher Island for the foreseeable future, and the county's own numbers are the clearest evidence of why.
Fisher Island's market has never moved on headlines alone, and this situation is no exception. If you're weighing what any of this means for a property you already own on the island, or for a purchase you're considering there, Carlo Dipasquale tracks these dynamics closely and is available to schedule a private consultation.
