Share and share alike

Several friends and I are renting a ski house this winter. Although most have been good about keeping things tidy, two of my girlfriends are absolute slobs. How do I get them to clean up their act? —Lorna B., Long Island City, Queens

Isn’t it amazing what you can learn about people you think you know simply by spending some time together under the same roof? I’ll bet while you’re grumbling about these messy Bessies, they’re complaining to anyone who will listen that you’re uptight.

You could probably ease up on these two if the areas in question are their own rooms — as long as the messes don’t creep into the space of others (or attract critters). The same cannot be said for common areas like the kitchen, bathroom and living room, where everyone shares responsibility for keeping things pristine.

In private, have a gentle-but-firm conversation with the offenders. Your goal should not be to embarrass, but to convey the importance of maintaining a tidy quality in shared living spaces. They might not become “cleanliness is next to godliness” converts, but even their grudging cooperation will mean a more enjoyable environment for everyone else.

I’ve put together a great ski house in Vermont for Presidents Day weekend, but one member of the group pulled out at the last minute due to a work emergency. He’s now asked me to find someone to take his place. Shouldn’t he be the one to find a substitute? — Arthur D., Englewood, NJ

Ah, the joys of organizing a group getaway. You find the house, negotiate a rate, find the right mix of people, sign a lease, send a deposit and then, just when you think your work is done, someone drops out and dumps the responsibility of finding a replacement on you.

Work emergencies happen, of course, and his coming to you first was the right course of action. For all he knew, you had a waiting list of friends eager to join. However, at this stage, I’m guessing you have neither the time nor the desire, and you’re fully within your rights to expect the canceler to find his own understudy.

If he’s unable to come up with another person at this late date, he must be prepared to pay the full share amount. Under no circumstances should his work crisis become your monetary one.

We’re invited annually to spend a weekend in the Catskills with friends who own a ski house. They’re always so generous, but refuse our offers to take them out to dinner during our stay. Any thoughts on how we can repay them for their hospitality? — Trina K., Sunset Park, Brooklyn

Start with a great hostess gift . . . ideally something for the house. (After many shared weekends together, you should know their taste by now.) Bring food and spirits, too — some to be consumed during your visit, some to be left for their enjoyment at a later date. When you get back home, send them an invite for a home-cooked meal at your place. And last but not least, don’t forget the thank-you note.

Next column: Newspaper nabbers and other neighbor nuisances. Got a question? E-mail me at
t
estingthemarketnyc@gmail.com or Tweet me @MisterManners.

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American, US Airways agree to join

After a nearly yearlong courtship, the union becomes official on Valentine’s Day: American Airlines and US Airways are expected to formally announce plans to merge Thursday morning.

The boards of both companies approved the merger late Wednesday, the Associated Press reported, citing four people close to the situation.

The move brings stability to one of Miami-Dade County’s largest private employers more than a year after the airline and its parent company filed for bankruptcy, leaving the fate of thousands of employees — and the largest carrier at Miami International Airport — in question.

If the deal is approved by American’s bankruptcy judge and antitrust regulators, it will create the world’s biggest airline, with close to 100,000 employees, 1,500 aircraft and $38.7 billion in combined revenue. American used to hold the top title but lost that position after United Airlines merged with Continental and Delta Air Lines merged with Northwest.

Travelers won’t notice immediate changes. The new airline will be called American Airlines. It likely will be months before the frequent-flier programs are merged, and possibly years before the two airlines are fully combined.

And for Miami travelers, it’s unlikely that much will change at any point. American and regional carrier American Eagle handled 68 percent of traffic at the airport last year, while US Airways accounted for just 2 percent. American boasts 328 flights to 114 destinations from Miami.

“We don’t expect any substantial changes at MIA if the merger occurs because our traffic is largely driven by the strength of the Miami market and not the airlines serving it,” said airport spokesman Greg Chin.

American has said for more than a year that its long-term plan calls for increasing departures at key hubs, including Miami, by 20 percent. That pledge has already started to materialize; in recent months, the airline has added new service to Asuncion, Paraguay and Roatán, Honduras.

During its bankruptcy restructuring, about 400 American employees lost jobs, leaving American and its regional carrier, American Eagle, with 9,894 employees in Miami-Dade County and 43 in Fort Lauderdale. US Airways has few employees in the area.

“It really isn’t going to affect Miami in a very major way anytime soon,” said Michael Boyd, an aviation consultant in Evergreen, Colo. “Only because US Airways isn’t a big player in South Florida.”

At Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, American and US Airways combined would still only be the fifth-largest airline after Southwest, Spirit, JetBlue and Delta, a spokesman said. The two airlines have little overlap in routes from Fort Lauderdale.

Despite the lack of major changes, Boyd said the merger would be a good development for Miami.

“It should be positive for the employees and it should be positive for the communities that the airlines serve,” he said.

Robert Herbst, an independent airline analyst and consultant, said US Airways will add a “significant amount” of destinations in the Northeast, including Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

“You’ll see some additional service, I believe, from Miami to Europe because of the merger, and better connections to Asian markets,” he said. “It’ll be good for the Miami area.”

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Marco Rubio’s school voucher plan shows strong Jeb Bush ties

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio immediately followed his rebuttal to the president’s State of the Union address Tuesday night by releasing a “school-choice” bill to allow taxpayers to subsidize private-school education for poor kids.

By putting legislation where his mouth is, Rubio wanted to reinforce the theme of his speech — that conservative policy is good for the poor and working class.

The legislation, which revolves around tax credits, also makes good on a 2010 Rubio campaign pledge, and reinforces his strong ties to former Republican Gov. Jeb Bush, his friend and mentor whose nonprofit education foundation helped shape the legislation.

Bush passed a similar school-choice voucher program in 2001, which Rubio voted for while he served in the Florida House.

If Florida’s experience is any measure, though, Democrats, teacher unions and some church-and-state separatists will oppose the scholarship-voucher program, saying it indirectly uses tax money to fund private, and often religious education.

“It’s not about unions. It’s not about school administrators,” Rubio said in an interview. “This is about parents. The only parents in America who don’t have a choice where their kids go to school are poor parents.”

Though Rubio’s rhetoric adopts longstanding Democratic talking points about the disadvantaged, the legislation will have a tough time in the Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate.

Across the nation, Democrats and teacher unions have faced off with Bush and his nonprofit foundation as it pushes for more school-choice legislation. Rubio’s legislation, in conjunction with Bush’s lobbying efforts, could bring the fight to Capitol Hill.

It can be a good wedge issue as well for Republicans; black lawmakers, who tend to be Democratic, often support school-choice laws aimed at poor children.

The legislation also highlights the closeness of Rubio and Bush amid Washington speculation that the two might have a rivalry as each eyes a White House bid. Associates of the two say it’s far more likely Rubio will run than Bush; and there’s no real rivalry between them as both take leadership roles in the national immigration debate.

Rubio’s involvement in rounding up conservative support for immigration reform was a key factor in his selection by GOP leaders to rebut President Barack Obama’s speech. Rubio, however, doesn’t want to be limited to immigration policy — a reason he announced his Educational Opportunities Act right after his speech. The legislation should be introduced Wednesday.

Before his Tuesday night national address, Democrats accused him of supporting “extreme” budget policies that would cut social-welfare programs.

Democrats are sure to zero in on a potential irony of his legislation: It could technically increase the debt at the same time Rubio is talking about debt reduction.

Rubio said he doesn’t know how much the legislation could cost the federal treasury. It has not been analyzed yet, or scored, by the Congressional Budget Office. About 11 states have similar tax-credit programs with about $405 million in tax credits for 148,300 students.

Under Rubio’s legislation, corporations or individuals could annually donate a maximum $100,000 or $4,500, respectively. The money, for which the donor receives a dollar-for-dollar tax credit, flows to a nonprofit “Scholarship Grant Organization,” which then distributes money to private schools on behalf of thousands of students.

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Oscar Nominees Before They Were Famous

As hard as it may be to believe, Oscar nominees Bradley Cooper, Ben Affleck, Jessica Chastain, Anne Hathaway and Jennifer Lawrence were once fresh-faced actors itching for their big break in the biz.

Pics: Star Sightings!

Click the video to see the five stars (before they became famous) in their very first on-screen roles!

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Who failed Chicago?

Michelle Malkin

As her husband delivered his annual State of the Union Address last night, First Lady Michelle Obama hosted the parents of an innocent teenage girl shot and killed by Chicago gang thug. On Friday, President Obama will travel to the Windy City to decry violence and crusade for more gun laws in the town with the strictest gun laws and bloodiest gun-related death tolls in America.

Does the White House really want to open up a national conversation about the state of Chicago? OK, let’s talk.

Obama, his wife, his campaign strategists, his closest cronies, and his biggest bundlers all hail from Chicago. Senior adviser and former Chicago real estate mogul/city planning commissioner Valerie Jarrett and her old boss, Richard Daley, presided over a massive “Plan for Transformation” in the mid-1990s to rescue taxpayer-subsidized public housing from its bloody hellhole. How’d that work out for you, Chicago?

Answer: This social-justice experiment failed miserably. A Chicago Tribune investigation found that after Daley/Jarrett dumped nearly $500 million of federal funding into crime-ridden housing projects, the housing complexes (including the infamous Altgeld-Murray homes) remained dangerous, drug-infested, racially segregated ghettos.

Altgeld is a long-troubled public housing complex on Chicago’s South Side where youth violence has proven immune to “community organizing” solutions and the grand redevelopment schemes championed by Obama and company.

In fact, as I’ve reported previously, it’s the same nightmarish ’hood where Obama cut his teeth as a community activist — and exaggerated his role in cleaning up asbestos in the neighborhood, according to fellow progressive foot soldiers. As always, Obama’s claims to success there were far more aspirational than concrete.

In the meantime, lucrative contracts went to politically-connected Daley pals in the developer world to “save” Chicago youth and families. Another ghetto housing project, the Grove Parc slum, was managed by Jarrett’s former real-estate empire, Habitat, Inc. Jarrett refused to answer questions about the dilapidated housing development after becoming the top consigliere in the Obama administration.

But as the Boston Globe’s Binyamin Appelbaum, who visited the slums several years ago, reported: “Federal inspectors graded the condition of the complex an 11 on a 100-point scale — a score so bad the buildings now face demolition. . . . [Jarrett] co-managed an even larger subsidized complex in Chicago that was seized by the federal government in 2006, after city inspectors found widespread problems.”

Grove Parc and several other monumental housing flops “were developed and managed by Obama’s close friends and political supporters. Those people profited from the [federal] subsidies even as many of Obama’s constituents suffered.”

Democrats poured another $30 million in public money into the city’s public schools to curb youth violence over the last three years. The New York Times hailed the big-government plan to fund more social workers, community organizers and mentors and create jobs for at-risk youth.

But watchdogs on the ground exposed it as a wasteful “makework scheme.” One local activist nicknamed it “Jobs for Jerks” because “it rewards some of the worst students in the school system with incredibly rare employment opportunities while leaving good students to fend for themselves.”

Obama and his ineffectual champions of Chicago’s youth will demand more taxpayer “investments” to throw at the problem. But money is no cure for the soaring fatherlessness, illegitimacy and family disintegration that have characterized Chicago inner-city life since Obama’s hero Saul Alinsky pounded the pavement.

As City Journal’s Heather MacDonald noted in a damning indictment of the do-gooders’ failures, “official silence about illegitimacy and its relation to youth violence remains as carefully preserved in today’s Chicago as it was during Obama’s organizing time there.”

Team Obama will find perverted ways to lay blame for Chicago’s youth violence crisis on the NRA, Fox News, George Bush and the Tea Party. But as the community organizer-in-chief prepares to evade responsibility again, he should remember: When you point one finger at everyone else, four other fingers point right back at you-know-who.

malkinblog@gmail.com

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South Florida group commits to investing in U.S. Century Bank

U.S. Century Bank has signed off on its deal to recapitalize with cash from a high-profile group of local investors, allowing the Doral bank to remain independent.

The investment team, led by brothers Jimmy and Kenny Tate of Tate Capital, Sergio Rok of Rok Enterprises and Jorge Perez of Related Group, has expertise in buying distressed assets and promises to fortify U.S. Century to give it a financial foundation for success.

“We believe that our group, coupled with the additional investors we’re bringing in, will prove to be the proper brain trust needed in order to clean up the past and build a beautiful bank in the future,” said Jimmy Tate, 49.

The “handpicked” group is composed of about 10 prominent South Florida business leaders with substantial experience, who will each be making a significant investment, said Tate, who did not yet have their approvals to name them all, but said he hopes to soon.

“They are the leading businessmen in South Florida, and they are philanthropic, and they have South Florida at heart,” he said. “And they are very excited about this endeavor because they believe, as I believe, that there is a strong demand for a well-capitalized community bank that serves the banking needs of the local community.”

As part of the deal, the group will pump $50 million in capital into U.S. Century, becoming majority owners. In addition, the group will pay about $90 million to buy certain loans, including all $98 million of U.S. Century’s non-performing loans. The deal will also provide for a negotiated amount of more than $5 million to be paid to the federal government for U.S. Century’s $50.2 million in TARP funds, said U.S. Century President and Chief Executive Carlos J. Dávila.

“I certainly think this will be a very positive transaction for all the major stakeholders, meaning the community, the shareholders and our employees,” Dávila said.

U.S. Century’s 441 existing shareholders will remain as stockholders, though their percentage of ownership will shrink. Those shareholders will have the option to invest additional capital along with the new group, Dávila said.

The deal is the culmination of years of searching for capital for struggling U.S. Century, whose agreement to be bought by C1 Bank of St. Petersburg was called off by C1 in December.

U.S. Century, a Hispanic-oriented bank that opened in 2002, has been operating under a regulatory consent order since June 2011, which has mandated that it raise capital, among other issues.

The new deal, which is now under a signed letter of intent, should bring the bank “close” to regulators’ requirement of an 8 percent capital ratio, Dávila said.

“For a bank that is in distress or under a consent order where there is a requirement to raise capital, the terms and conditions of this deal are extremely reasonable and fair for the existing shareholders,” he said.

Furthermore, U.S. Century, with $1 billion in assets and 24 branches, now will get a new shot at life as one of the only remaining locally owned community banks of its size. Others, like City National Bank of Florida and BankAtlantic have been sold in recent years to foreign owners or larger U.S. banks.

Tate and his team have been working on the deal since January, after first making an unsolicited offer while the C1 deal was under way.

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Related could give jolt to long overdue Watson Island development plans

The long overdue development of Watson Island, stalled for a dozen years by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and a collapsed economy, may have received a huge jolt when New York’s Related Companies agreed to study the plan and possibly join forces in its development.

Developer Mehmet Bayraktar, who won the right to develop on the waterfront crown jewel back in 2001, said Monday that the company run by Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross has signed a Letter of Intent to “co-develop” the entire project.

“They will come in and we will work together jointly on the whole project. We’re co-developers or co-investors,” Bayraktar said Monday.

He described a Letter of Intent as a non-binding agreement in which both sides agree to do due diligence and spend time and money studying the plans. “It’s like an engagement, or a promissory note,” he said.

Ross was out of town Monday and couldn’t be reached for comment. Ric Katz, a public relations hand hired to help the Dolphins with the push to get public money for Sun Life Stadium renovations, couldn’t confirm the agreement late Monday.

According to Bayraktar, Related would be involved in three main components of the proposal: a hotel and residential complex, retail and a giant mega-yacht facility meant to lure some of the wealthiest people in the world. He estimated the project he won with a $281 million bid in 2001would likely balloon to a cost of about $800 million today. If Related absorbs 50 percent of the deal, it could put Ross’ investment close to $400 million.

“We’re planning to start building this fall,” said Bayraktar, who said he’s known Ross for many years.

The news was all good to Miami leaders who have struggled in dealing with Bayraktar, especially the past three years, when he fell behind in rent by as much as $500,000.

Several times they’ve threatened to kill the plan and reopen the bid to prospective developers. Each time, however, Bayraktar has been able to make required payments before the city rebid the project. Other times lobbyist Brian May was persuasive enough in pleading Bayraktar’s case that commissioners stalled killing the deal. “It’s fantastic news,” said Miami Commissioner Marc Sarnoff, who represents the district that encompasses Watson Island, a large circular spit of land that links Miami Beach to the mainland. “It shows we have someone who has the ability to get the ball across the goal. This type of project is right up his [Ross’] alley.”

Related, which specializes in high-end residential properties, also built New York’s Time Warner Center and CityPlace in West Palm Beach; it is currently working on the high-profile 26-acre Hudson Yards project on Manhattan’s West Side.

Bayraktar has been beset by problems since he won the right through a public vote to develop on Watson Island in November 2001.

The original $281 million plan would have yielded Miami a pair of ritzy hotels, one 18 floors and the other 28 floors. Shops, gardens, and restaurants were planned for more than 221,000 square feet of retail space, and a 54-slip mega-yacht complex called for matching 470-foot platforms.

Bayraktar’s company, the Flagstone Property Group, was to pay Miami $1 million a year in rent during the two years it would take to build, then $2 million a year and a percentage of retail and hotel room sales. Miami leaders drooled at the thought of $250 million into its coffers over the project’s 45-year lease.

But construction stalled as banks backed away after 9/11 and Bayraktar fought lawsuits and money issues. When the economy began to tank again in 2007 and banks again wouldn’t commit to the plan, the city granted him extensions.

Bayraktar and May have been a constant presence at City Hall since early 2010, soon after Tomás Regalado was elected mayor and made saving the Flagstone plan one of his top priorities.

“We expect to be open by 2016,” said Bayraktar.

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Bachelor Recap Sean's Sister Provides Perspective on Tierra

Apparently there is one girl whose words have weight enough to sway The Bachelor from his affections for Tierra, and that's his sister Shay.

One week prior to the all-important hometown dates, Sean flies his sister to St. Croix to help him work out his feelings for the remaining six. Harking back to her sage, sisterly advice before he embarked on his Bachelor adventure, Shay tells Sean not to "end up with a girl no one likes." The words strike a painful chord with him seeing as Tierra's alienation from the other ladies is no longer a secret.

Pics: 'The Bachelor' Scorecard (Did the Relationships Sizzle or Fizzle?)

Inspired to test his sister's intuition, Sean decides to introduce Tierra to his sibling, but when he arrives to the ladies' hotel, the resident mean girl is found weeping after an all-out war of words with AshLee. At first dismayed by her pain, Sean comes to realize the humane thing to do would be to send Tierra home, fearing she won't be able to handle the more stressful weeks ahead.

"I can't believe they did this to me!" are Tierra's departing words as she is sent packing. "I hope the girls got what they wanted."

During the final rose ceremony in St. Croix, Lesley is cut loose from the remaining five. Despite their incredible connection and friendship, Sean worries that the relationship had gone stagnant.

Pics: Meet 'Bachelor' Sean Lowe's Lucky Ladies!

A confused, crying Catherine takes Lesley's elimination especially hard as she believed that Sean and Les, in her opinion, were better suited for eachother than she will ever be with Mr. Lowe.

Next Monday on ABC, Desiree, Lindsay, Catherine and AshLee will get to introduce their maybe-husband-to-be to the family, but it seems the hometown dates don't go over as well for Des in particular, whose protective brother appears unwilling to accept her "playboy" boyfriend.

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Bus strike: ayor Mike wins

Michael Benjamin

This afternoon, it will be checkmate for the school-bus strikers. The strike essentially ends — thanks to the Bloomberg gambit.

The mayor played it perfectly, and willingly sacrificed pieces to achieve his endgame.

At midday today, the Office of Pupil Transportation will open the bid packages for the K-12 school-bus routes. It can start service under the new contracts before September — though not as soon as parents hope, since the contracts must go through the city’s lengthy review process. Still, those bids are what the strike was supposed to stop.

AP

Losers: Local 1181 boss Michael Cordiello (r.) with International ATU chief Larry Hanley.

But yesterday, in a bid to be competitive, several bus companies went to court to void the employee protections in current contracts and to halt the new bids.

If that suit fails, a mix of new and currently-contracted bus companies will likely win contracts. Meanwhile, a number of bus companies with current contracts will probably decline to submit bids, because their union contracts would leave them uncompetitive. Their unionized employees, now on strike, would be out of jobs as of June 30.

For these workers, the only rational decision will be to return to work. Already in the last few days, workers have crossed union picket lines to return to their jobs.

After today (assuming the bus companies’ suit fails), it will make sense for more striking drivers and attendants to return for their last few months of pay and benefits, especially their health-care coverage. And it makes even more sense for these workers to seek work with the new companies.

In a sense, the worker-protection bubble finally burst. Small bus companies and their workers are collateral victims; the worker protections put those companies, already operating on a slim margin, at a competitive disadvantage.

When the city, citing court rulings, put out for bid new bus contracts that didn’t require the employee protections (as these contracts had for 35 years), that didn’t mean the bus companies could break their contracts with the unions to provide those priveleges. That left them handicapped in bidding, since they’d have higher labor costs than firms without the generous protections.

To stay competitive, the companies needed the union to work with them to lower costs. But the union instead went on strike — trying to force Bloomberg to retain the protections, and even to get the state to pass a new law to undo the court ruling.

When the National Labor Relations Board this month failed to force even a temporary resolution favorable to the union, the end was in sight.

Mind you, Mayor Bloomberg sacrificed a number of chess pieces to achieve his endgame.

Parents, especially of special-needs children, are angry at him for four weeks of educational disruption. The stress on special-needs kids is incalculable. The city schools lose federal funding for students who couldn’t attend during the strike.

Bloomberg alienated the bus company operators — who feel caught in the middle of the dispute — by not paying them for service they didn’t (couldn’t) deliver during the strike.

Finally, after more than a decade of fairly good labor relations, he will be remembered for breaking one union’s hold on an industry.

Bloomberg’s bold gambit will benefit his successors, who won’t be saddled with needlessly high school-busing costs.

If the city’s lucky, the mayor in his final months in office will use similar gambits to tackle some of the much larger union-benefit issues that are consuming ever-larger chunks of the municipal budget.

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Green cards for sale at a South Beach hotel: Competition is on for EB5 investment visas

If David Hart gets his way, South Beach’s 42-room Astor Hotel will be on a hiring spree this year as it adds concierge service, a roof-top pool, an all-night diner, spa and private-car service available 24 hours a day.

New hires will be crucial to Hart’s business plan, since foreign investors have agreed to pay about $50,000 for each job created by the Art Deco boutique.

The Miami immigration lawyer specializes in arranging visas for wealthy foreign citizens under a special program that trades green cards for investment dollars. Businesses get the money and must use it to boost payroll. The minimum investment is $500,000 to add at least 10 jobs to the economy. That puts the pressure on Hart and his partners at the Astor to beef up payroll dramatically, with plans to take a hotel with roughly 20 employees to one with as many as 100 workers.

“My primary responsibility is to make something happen here over the next two years that will create the jobs we need,’’ Hart said a few steps away from a nearly empty restaurant on a recent weekday morning. “It’s all going to be transformed.”

Though established in the 1990s, the “EB5” visas soared in popularity during the recession as developers sought foreign cash to replace dried-up credit markets in the United States.

Chinese investors dominate the transactions, accounting for about 65 percent of the nearly 9,000 EB5 visas granted since 2006. South Korea finishes a distant second at 12 percent and the United Kingdom holds the third-place slot at 3 percent. If Latin America and the Caribbean were one country, they would rank No. 4 on the list, with 231 EB5 visas granted, or about 3 percent of the total.

Competition has gotten stiffer for the deep-pocketed foreign investors willing to pay for green cards. The University of Miami’s bio-science research park near the Jackson hospital system raised $20 million from 40 foreign investors under the EB5 program, most of them from Asia. The money went into the park’s first building; visa brokers are waiting to see if the second building will proceed so they can offer a new pool of potential green-card sales.

In Hollywood, the stalled $131 million Margaritaville resort had hoped to raise about $75 million from EB5 investors before ditching that plan last year to pursue more traditional financing. A retail complex by developer Jeff Berkowitz in Coral Gables also launched a program to raise $50 million in EB5 money for the project, Gables Station. Hart worked with other EB5 investors to back pizza restaurants in Miami and South Beach. A limestone mine in Martin County also was backed by EB5 dollars.

This year, the city of Miami itself is expected to get into the business by setting up an EB5 program to raise foreign cash for a range of city businesses and developments. The first would be the tallest building in the city — developer Tibor Hollo’s planned 85-story apartment tower, the Panorama, in downtown Miami.

With a construction cost of about $700 million, Miami’s debut EB5 venture hopes to raise about $100 million from foreign investors, said Laura Reiff, the Greenberg Traurig lawyer in Virginia working with Miami on the EB5 effort. “This is a marquis project,’’ she said.

The arrangement is a novel one for Miami, with the city planning to help a private developer raise funds overseas for a new high-rise. And it would allow Hollo and future participants to tout the city of Miami’s endorsement when competing with other Miami-area projects for EB5 dollars. “We will have the benefit of the brand of the city of Miami,’’ said Mikki Canton, the $6,000-a-month city consultant heading Miami’s EB5 effort. “A lot of these others are privately owned and they won’t have that brand.”

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