From the orange
McLaren he paraded around South Beach to the $4 million
Princess yacht that was too big for the dock at his Cocoplum
estate, developer Rishi Kapoor cultivated an image of
impressive wealth even as his dream of a real estate empire
crumbled around him.
Although his completed projects were few, Kapoor talked of
becoming the United States’ first trillion-dollar developer,
won the trust of wealthy investors and lured politicians
into his orbit. He quietly hired Miami Mayor Francis Suarez
as a $10,000-a-month consultant while he was seeking city
zoning approval for a new project, rented a small building
from Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago and purchased land across
the street for a new condo development in a deal that netted
a $640,000 commission for a politically-connected brokerage.
Those who worked with Kapoor said he wanted a face like
Suarez’s to help sell his projects. He boasted to friends
and employees of dinners and cigars at Suarez’s home, and
assured investors that he had the mayor’s ear and assistance
in overcoming barriers at City Hall.
But behind that image of success and access, Kapoor’s
emergent empire was in free fall.
As Location Ventures’ chief executive, Kapoor shifted money
from one project to another as bills came due, including
funds provided by lenders, investors and condo buyers,
according to claims in lawsuits and court records. His
company and its development entities overpaid for land,
borrowed millions from private lenders at high interest
rates and failed to meet construction costs, according to
records, investors and lenders.
His luxury condo tower near downtown Coral Gables, a
monument to his jump from small-time developer to emerging
star, was over budget and behind schedule. Investors were
demanding he return millions sunk into a half-dozen or so
upscale residential projects around South Florida. And the
top financial executive at Kapoor’s development firm had
confronted him about troubling business practices, including
the $10,000 payments to Miami’s mayor for what he described
as “unknown services” — a dispute that would portend the
beginning of the end for Kapoor as an up-and-coming builder
and embroil Suarez in a criminal investigation.
Today, far from creating the “ultimate seven-star luxury
experience,” Kapoor, a 39-year-old Atlanta transplant, is
defending a reputation under siege. U.S. marshals, armed
with a federal judge’s order requested by a bank, seized his
68-foot Princess motor yacht this October while he and his
wife were aboard. Another lender is seeking to foreclose on
his waterfront home. His real estate portfolio, which once
appeared to stretch from the Bahamas to Montana, is being
unloaded and sold off for parts.
Former Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Alan Fine, hired by Location
Ventures’ board of directors to sell off assets and pay back
creditors, confirmed that his biggest sales so far were two
planned luxury condo projects at 1505 Ponce de Leon Blvd. in
Coral Gables and 551 Bayshore Dr. in Fort Lauderdale, both
bought by former Location Ventures investors.
Even Location Ventures’ 299 Alhambra Cir. office is on the
scrap heap, with a collection of furniture, computers and
other office equipment to be auctioned off at a value of
only $41,000 to help the company pay bills, according to an
auctioneer’s report.
“He should be on top of the world,” said one former Location
Ventures contractor who, like other sources close to
Kapoor’s business, spoke on condition of anonymity due to
the state and federal investigations and controversies
surrounding his projects. “He was a rising star.”
Kapoor has repeatedly ignored interview requests. In a
recent email, he wrote that the Miami Herald “has covered me
very unfairly and untruthfully.”
Suarez and Lago have said they did nothing wrong.
Showmanship and Relationships
Before he was removed this summer as CEO of Location
Ventures, Kapoor’s company had only completed a few projects
around Miami-Dade County, but Kapoor boasted of a grand
future.
“It is f------ incredible what we have built in just eight
years,” Kapoor told Location Ventures employees in a
four-page email in April 2022 titled “Real Talk.”
“I challenge you to find other real estate firms that have
accomplished the same or more in that timeline,” he wrote.
“You should feel like explorers finding new horizons —
always pushing to do what others have not.”
Ten years earlier, Kapoor launched Location Ventures with a
former University of Miami classmate and fraternity brother.
They began with a renovated Coral Gables apartment complex
marketed to students and others near the campus.
From its modest beginnings, the company would ratchet up
ambitions with its first major luxury condo project, the
Villa Valencia, a 13-story high rise near downtown Coral
Gables. Location Ventures, along with its subsidiary URBIN,
also had its sights on projects elsewhere in the Gables,
Coconut Grove, Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale.
Local business publications featured interviews with Kapoor,
who talked about revolutionizing luxury living and also
addressing Miami’s housing crisis for young workers by
building apartment and condo projects that downsized living
units while providing working spaces, restaurants, shops and
offices.
Kapoor grew bolder. He pitched a 500-acre residential
development with stables and horse trails on South
Miami-Dade farmland. Corporate records show he was
negotiating to buy a small island in the Bahamas for $50
million to be the site of a “world-class, ultra-luxury
wellness community and superyacht marina.”
He had recruited more than 40 employees and about 50
investors and lenders. He lured new backers at one meeting
for Villa Valencia, his company’s signature project, by
staging his sales pitch at the private Swiss bank UBS’ local
office.
Known as a 24/7 workaholic, Kapoor’s personal and
professional lives were intertwined.
He did business in his office and on his yacht, where he
served up his signature “Rishi-rita” cocktails of Tequila
and Sprite Zero and, according to former employees, hired a
private chef. He used a corporate AMEX credit card to spend
$79,050 on luxury-watch marketplace Chrono 24, and put a
$50,000 “bonus advance” toward the purchase of a McLaren
sports car, according to Location Ventures correspondence
taking account of what he owed and was owed.
Paid $350,000 a year as the firm’s CEO, plus millions more
in fees from property acquisitions, loan arrangements and
development projects, he and his wife, a former animal
trainer at Zoo Miami, bought a nearly $6 million waterfront
estate in Cocoplum in November 2021, according to public
records and former employees. In March, he borrowed more
than $4 million to purchase the Suneeta II to replace the
boat he already had. The waterway behind Kapoor’s new home
was too small to fit the developer’s yacht, so he kept it at
a marina slip at the Cocoplum Yacht Club that he had
purchased for $695,000 in January 2022.
Colleagues said he craved being at the center of attention
in both his personal and business lives. A longtime friend
who worked at Location Ventures until its demise said Kapoor
used to take detours in his McLaren to Ocean Drive, one of
Miami’s most famous see-and-be-seen locations, when they
would go out to breakfast on South Beach.
In the South Florida Business Journal’s “40 under 40” from
2021, Kapoor said his fantasy career was to be a race car
driver, and that if he were to be played in a movie, the
actor to portray him would be George Clooney.
Eager to make connections with important people, Kapoor
invited mayors to ribbon cuttings and doled out more than
$100,000 in campaign checks from corporate accounts, about
half of which went to a political committee supporting a
losing candidate in this November’s Miami Beach mayoral
race.
Eventually, he began directly paying politicians where his
company was developing new projects — hiring Miami’s Suarez
as a part-time consultant and renting a storefront office
from the mayor in Coral Gables.
Help from City Hall
After becoming closer in 2019, public records show that
Miami’s mayor met multiple times with Kapoor while trying to
change city laws to help him build a $70 million residential
and retail complex in Coconut Grove.
In July 2021, Suarez quietly signed a $10,000-a-month
consulting contract with Location Ventures’ subsidiary,
URBIN. Kapoor, who told friends he would dine and smoke
cigars with the mayor at Suarez’s home, quickly leaned on
the mayor to help him launch his new brand at an October
2021 event in the Design District.
When Kapoor began pursuing a second high-rise condo project
in the downtown Coral Gables area, he leased a vacant
building from Mayor Lago and his business partners to use as
a nearby showroom — even though he wouldn’t purchase the
condo development site for another six months. When Location
Ventures did buy the 1505 Ponce de Leon property for $35.5
million, a $640,000 closing fee went to the boutique
brokerage owned by former Hialeah City Councilman Oscar De
la Rosa, where Lago and Hialeah Mayor Esteban Bovo hung
their real estate licenses.
In total, over the past three years, Kapoor’s companies were
tied to about $1 million in payments, including the closing
fee on the Coral Gables land sale, to business and campaign
accounts linked to Miami-area politicians. Suarez, who at
the time was building toward an ill-fated run for president,
was paid at least $170,000 from September 2021 through March
2023, according to Location Ventures’ corporate and
financial records.
For their money, both mayors say they behaved appropriately.
Lago says he received nothing from the closing fee on the
property sale. He recused himself from votes on Kapoor’s
projects after becoming his landlord.
Suarez, who makes $130,000 a year as mayor, says he worked
for URBIN as a consultant to find private-equity investors
and denies lobbying his own city on behalf of Kapoor. He
says he didn’t meet with the developer about his Miami
project while on his company’s payroll.
But notes of company meetings held last year by Location
Ventures indicate Kapoor told his staff that he would ask
Suarez to help when his $70 million Coconut Grove project
ran into roadblocks with city regulators. The meeting notes,
provided to investors to appease their frustrations over
repeated delays on the project, made his role clear: “Mayor
Suarez to assist in pushing this along.”
Ultimately, Kapoor worked through Suarez’s staff to lobby
the city’s zoning director to change his position that the
project’s dimensions were illegal under Miami law.
“Please thank the Mayor for his support and assistance,”
Kapoor wrote in an Oct. 11, 2022 email to the Suarez aide
who interceded.
Kapoor’s business with Suarez has drawn the interest of
local and federal investigators.
Several former Location Ventures employees said Kapoor used
politicians like Suarez to promote his projects.
“Rishi just paid for a face,” said a former executive at
Location Ventures.
Dario Moreno, a Florida International University associate
professor specializing in politics and international
relations, said Kapoor followed in the footsteps of other
developers from outside Miami who made a quick mark by
turning like-minded politicians into allies with campaign
donations, gifts and, in Suarez’s case, a lucrative side
job.
“Politicians are always looking for someone to pick up the
tab — it’s a very transactional thing,” Moreno told the
Herald. “And where we see this a lot is in Miami’s biggest
industry, real estate.”