Ask most people on Fisher Island what changed this year and they will not start with the ferry schedule or the new towers rising on the last oceanfront parcel. They will start with the tanks. The fuel depot on the island's north shore has sat there for close to a century, a working piece of industrial infrastructure tucked into one of the wealthiest zip codes in the country. For a few months last fall, residents believed it was finally leaving. Then the company that promised to remove it tried to sell the whole site back to the government instead, tanks included, for more than double what it had paid.
That reversal, not the eminent domain fight that followed, is the part of this story residents should actually be watching. The county is an easy villain in the version making the rounds. The more uncomfortable read is that the developer Fisher Island welcomed with open arms is the one who changed the terms.
The Deal Everyone On The Island Cheered
In the fall of 2025, Chicago-based HRP Group closed on the 9.6-acre fuel depot site for $180 million, buying it from longtime operator TransMontaigne Partners, which had listed the property in 2024 asking $200 million. Residents were glad to see it go. The depot has supplied fuel to PortMiami's cruise and cargo ships for roughly a century, and its presence next to some of the most expensive real estate in South Florida had long been treated as an inconvenience the island would eventually outgrow.
HRP signed two agreements with island representatives the same week it closed:
- A development agreement committing HRP to demolish the fuel tanks, remediate the land, and build two 13-story condominium towers under the name One Fisher Island, a project reported to cost roughly $2 billion.
- An option agreement requiring HRP to convey four acres of the site to the Fisher Island Community Association, along with $10 million worth of Fisher Island Club memberships for the new towers' future residents, in exchange for construction easements the association controlled.
That second document is the one doing the real work in this story. FICA does not own the fuel depot land. What it holds is a contract right to four of its ten acres, tied to HRP actually building what it said it would build. Everything that has happened since traces back to that single dependency.
What Changed By May
Behind the scenes, county officials spent roughly seven months negotiating with HRP on something entirely different: buying the property outright and keeping the fuel depot in place, rather than letting HRP tear it down. By late May 2026, the two sides had reportedly reached an agreement in principle worth up to $400 million, $200 million paid at closing and another $200 million spread over twenty years. The talks were led largely by then-Chief Operating Officer Jimmy Morales and then-PortMiami Director Hydi Webb, and Mayor Daniella Levine Cava has said she was not fully briefed until she reviewed the mediated deal over the weekend of May 30 and 31.
Details became public only because FICA and the Fisher Island Club sued HRP on May 28, 2026, not the county this time, arguing the developer's talks with Miami-Dade would breach the October agreements and leave the island's original bargain in ruins. The complaint that started the lawsuit did not mince words about what the tanks actually represent to the people living near them:
"Family homes sit 700 feet away. An elementary and middle school serving more than 160 children sits 2,000 feet away."
Within days, the deal collapsed. Deputy Mayor Roy Coley found a 1978 county covenant restricting part of the property to fuel-related use, one that would require a two-thirds commission vote to remove, a wrinkle HRP disputes but one that gave Levine Cava enough cover to walk away from the price tag. Morales and Webb both left their county positions shortly after, in what was widely reported as fallout from how the deal had been handled.
On June 16, 2026, county commissioners voted 11 to 1 to reject the $400 million ask and pursue eminent domain instead, letting a jury set the price if negotiations fail. Commissioner Oliver Gilbert, who sponsored the resolution, put it plainly at the meeting, saying the county would let a court decide what the property is worth if HRP would not come down on price. HRP's CEO, Roberto Perez, called it an unconstitutional seizure and said the company still intends to build One Fisher Island. Commissioner Raquel Regalado cast the lone dissenting vote, warning colleagues the decision would shape the county for the next fifty years.
Two Lawsuits, Two Different Fights
It is easy to flatten this into one storyline, residents versus government. It is actually two separate fights with two separate targets, filed months apart:
- A federal suit FICA and the Fisher Island Club brought against Miami-Dade in January 2026, arguing the county's eminent domain push serves a private interest, the cruise industry's fuel supply, rather than genuine public use, and that officials never seriously studied alternatives like fuel barges from Port Everglades.
- The state court suit against HRP itself, filed in May, accusing the developer of trying to breach the very agreements that got it construction easements and community support in the first place.
FICA represents more than 800 property owners on the island, and its board chairman, attorney Jim Ferraro, has been the public face of both cases. The distinction matters because the outcomes are not linked. The county could lose the eminent domain fight entirely and HRP could still walk away from its promise to residents. Or HRP could be forced to honor the October agreements and the county could still end up owning a fuel farm it does not want to run.
The Line Ferraro Won't Cross
The detail that gets lost in most coverage of this fight is what FICA actually wants, as distinct from what it is suing for. In an interview with WLRN, Ferraro was careful to draw a line most outsiders assume does not exist: FICA is not opposed to PortMiami having a fuel supply. Its position is that the facility belongs somewhere the port itself controls, not on residential land. He went further, saying the island would even accept the depot staying put if it were modernized to meet current safety standards.
That is a meaningfully softer position than "tanks must go," and it changes how residents should read everything that follows. The real question was never simply removal versus no removal. It is who absorbs the cost of bringing a century-old facility, currently holding an estimated 28 million gallons of combustible fuel, up to modern code, and who owns the liability if it fails during a storm. HRP's flip attempt did not just threaten the four acres promised to FICA. It threatened to leave the tanks in place without the upgrade residents said they would tolerate, all while the developer collected a return north of $200 million for a piece of land it never touched.
The Clock Residents Are Actually Watching
Under Florida's eminent domain statute, the county now has to observe a mandatory 30-day negotiation window with HRP before it can formally file to take the property. If those talks fail, the case goes to a jury, which will set the fair market value the county has to pay. Layered on top of that is a separate deadline: the current fuel supply arrangement for PortMiami runs through 2027, giving both sides a real date by which some resolution, purchase, taking, or renegotiated development deal, needs to exist.
For an island where buildable land is already this scarce, with the separate Six Fisher Island tower rising nearby on what its own developers call the last remaining oceanfront parcel, the fate of these ten acres carries weight beyond the immediate dispute. Whatever a jury eventually decides the land is worth will become the closest thing this market has to a public benchmark for how the county, and by extension future buyers, value proximity to industrial risk on one of the most private addresses in the country.
None of that resolves cleanly by any court date circled on a calendar. What residents can watch for in the coming weeks is whether HRP and the county sit down for that statutory negotiation window at all, and whether Ferraro's fallback position, an upgraded facility rather than a vanished one, ends up being the deal nobody wanted but everybody can live with.
If you are trying to make sense of what a dispute like this means for property decisions on the island, or you want a second set of eyes on due diligence before you commit to a purchase here, Luxe Home Concierge can help you read the situation clearly. Schedule your Luxe consultation to talk through what's actually at stake before you make a move.
