One good season can set the standard of what the Miami Hurricanes can be for the future under Jai Lucas.

Lucas nearly broke many single-season records as a first-year head coach, but that didn’t stop him from learning from mistakes that could have helped him improve the following season. However, he has three returning players, so it is a brand new team for the upstart head coach.

Yeah, for me it’s like coaching a whole new team,” Lucas said on an appearance on the “Hoops HQ” basketball podcast. “I think something that goes into the past is you have something that fits, and you just try to rinse and repeat. That’s kind of how a lot of programs are built. But now with this portal era, you don’t know what you’re going to get every year. My team looks completely different than before, so I had to build it differently.”

Lucas dove into some of his transfer targets and why they fit well with the Canes, starting with his new star point guard, Acaden Lewis.

“It started with being able to get a really good point guard,” Lucas said. “We had one last year in Tre Donaldson, and that’s where Acaden came into play. Having somebody you feel can run the team, but also has the ability to take over games. Watching his stuff in the portal and doing the analytics, he’s one of the best point guards in the country pound for pound with what he’s able to do and how he’s able to create.

“Like I talked about earlier, we had a prior relationship that went back to when I was at Duke and we recruited him there. So it was kind of an easy recruitment once the portal opened and I was able to talk to him.”

Lewis is complemented with the Canes new star defensive anchor Somto Cyril.

“Then I wanted a big, and that’s where Somto came in,” Lucas continued. “He played for a coach who is on staff now, Eric Pastrana, at Georgia, so that was kind of the relationship built there.

However, the biggest missing link from last season was shooting and depth. Lucas got that and loves how his team feels and looks heading into the summer.

“Once we got those two pieces along with Shelton and Dante, who we had coming back, the one thing I knew we missed last year and needed this year was shooting. That’s where Nick Dorn, Brent Bland, DeShawn Goode, and some of these other guys who will be high level complementary pieces came into play with our foundational pieces like Acaden, Shelton, Dante, Somto, those guys.

“Then we wanted to get more depth than we had last year where we played about six or seven. I wanted to be able to play eight plus, maybe nine this year. So we focused on that, focused on the shooting, but also wanted to have size. Nick’s size at 6 foot 7 and his ability to shoot, and what he did at Elon and then having it transfer over to what he was able to do in a Power Five conference, I felt was a fit for what we want to do here.”

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TA Realty bought back an industrial park near Miami International Airport, paying $47.6 million, property records show.

Called Webster Business Park, the 178,521-square-foot property includes four buildings at 7200 Northwest 25th Street, sandwiched between Palmetto Expressway and the Miami airport. The 7.8-acre campus was built in the 1970s. 

SEE ALSO: Bain Capital, 11North Partners Acquire Five Shopping Centers for $300M

The transaction equates to about $267 a square foot.

Boston-based TA Realty owned the asset between 2005 and 2016, before selling it for $16.6 million to Cofe Properties. AEW Capital Management, another Boston-based investor which served as the seller in the recent sale, purchased the campus for $25 million in 2019. 

The purchase marks at least the second time TA Realty has reacquired a South Florida asset it previously owned. In October, the firm paid $193 million for a 476-unit multifamily community in Palm Beach Gardens — roughly $89 million more than the price at which it sold the property in 2017.

On the industrial front, TA Realty has been building up its portfolio in Miami-Dade County. Last year, it bought a 43-acre industrial development site for $106 million, and a 361,461-square-foot portfolio for $84 million. The previous year, it paid $160 million for a four-building, 509,522-square-foot campus nearby. 

Representatives for TA Realty and AEW Capital Management did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Julia Echikson can be reached at jechikson@commercialobserver.com.

Two separate tragic incidents in Miami’s waters — both tied to prominent local real estate figures and which each ended in the death of a teen — are headed for very different legal outcomes. 

Commercial broker George Pino, CEO of Doral-based State Street Realty, faces a felony vessel homicide charge, and his attorneys recently filed a slew of court motions seeking to keep statements made by Pino and other information related to his alleged alcohol consumption before the crash from being mentioned by prosecutors during his trial, slated to start on June 1, the Miami Herald reported.

Pino was steering the boat on Biscayne Bay on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend in 2022 with 14 occupants, including his wife, daughter and 11 other teenage girls when the craft crashed into a concrete channel marker. The crash killed 17-year-old Luciana “Lucy” Fernandez and left Katerina “Katy” Puig, now 21, with a lifetime of physical disabilities.

Pino’s defense team is asking the court to exclude during trial a statement he made to an investigator the night of the crash that the wake of a larger boat headed toward his vessel and caused the crash. 

His attorneys are asking Judge Marisa Tinkler Mendez to bar testimony from the jury trial that recounts a witness’ statement that Pino had bloodshot eyes the night of the crash and that he had told police he had had “two beers” that day. The defense also wants to preclude the jury from hearing that Pino’s boat contained 61 empty alcohol containers when it was pulled out from the water after the crash.  

Pino had given some of his statements to police and an investigator before he was read his Miranda rights, according to his attorneys. 

Pino’s attorneys also filed motions to dismiss the criminal charges or to move the trial to Palm Beach or Orlando due to extensive media coverage of the crash in Miami-Dade County. 

Pino originally faced misdemeanor charges of careless boating, but prosecutors issued the more serious vessel homicide charge in 2024 after a witness came forward. 

This year, a neurologist issued a report on whether Pino had suffered a traumatic brain injury, causing amnesia and false memories for his recollection of the incident. The neurologist was hired by Pino’s attorneys, indicating they may use the doctor’s testimony in the trial. 

In another fatal incident in Miami’s waters that devastated the real estate community and the city as a whole, 15-year-old Ella Riley Adler –– daughter of Adler Real Estate Partners’ Matthew Adler –– died in a 2024 incident. Adler was wakeboarding in May 2024 in waters off Key Biscayne. She had fallen off her wakeboard when another boat struck her. 

The captain of the yacht that was towing the 15-year-old struck a plea deal, the Miami Herald reported. 

Edmund Richard Hartley pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges of navigational rule violations. Under the plea deal, prosecutors dropped two other misdemeanor charges, and Hartley was ordered to complete a boating safety course, barred from steering a vessel for 60 days starting next month, and was sentenced to six months probation. For the second charge, he also faces a second six-month probation term, though prosecutors could terminate this if he completes the first term. In addition, no criminal conviction will appear on Hartley’s record. 

Adler’s parents approved of the plea deal, though Matthew Adler told Hartley during a court hearing on Tuesday that he should have been more cautious. 

“At just 15 years old, Ella was flourishing. Her final year was in many ways her happiest and most exciting,” Matthew Adler said in court, the publication reported. “She was thriving academically, participating in debate, performing in the school musical ‘Chicago’ and growing into an exceptional young woman with limitless potential ahead of her.”

The captain of the boat that struck Adler, Carlos Guillermo “Bill” Alonso, also received a deal, pleading guilty to misdemeanor careless boating charges. He was sentenced to six months of probation and ordered to complete a boater safety course. 

The Adler family started the Ella Ridley Adler Foundation that supports Jewish life, education and art. —Lidia Dinkova