Details Magazine

September 2005

Miami Vice The Sequel

By Andrew Stengel

This is what the biggest real estate boom in the United States sounds like: a teeth rattling dance party. At three o'clock on a Sunday morning at a club called Mansion, 1,500 bodies bounce shoulder to shoulder to house music under a kaleidoscope of flashing lights. The noise is so riotous an Airbus could land in the middle of the dance floor and no one would even blink.

The crowd soon parts for Michael Capponi, 33, the club's Saturday-night promoter, who glides through, greeting models, supermodels, rich dudes, and really rich dudes, all of whom are willing to drop up to $300 on a bottle of vodka or $1,800 for a magnum of Cristal. The club has grown so popular since it opened in February of last year that part of the basketball-court-size dance floor was sacrificed for 125 VIP tables, each of which requires a three-to-four-bottle minimum.

What's fueling tonight's bacchanal, apart from the usual confluence of power, sex, music, and most likely, drugs, is the river of cash that's pouring into South Florida . Merrill Lynch recently ranked Miami as having the nation's hottest housing market for the third year in a row, and real-estate prices have skyrocketed by 37 percent a year for each of the last two years. It seems that nearly everyone in Miami Beach has a foothold in the market- Capponi himself is helping develop a condo tower downtown, with lofts valued at up to $4 million apiece. As one local puts it, "any time there's an upswing in disposable income, the vices that feed off it- gambling, prostitution, drugs- are going to increase as well." Sure, Miami Beach has always been the very definition of vice- in fact, Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx are currently on location here shooting a film adaptation of the seminal eighties TV series- but nowadays the decadence can be deafening,

"The fun in Miami is comparable to Saint-Tropez or Ibiza , "says Capponi. "I've never seen this degree of excess in New York or Los Angeles ." Exotic cars line South Beach streets like parking meters, and mega-yachts regularly take up residence in Biscayne Bay . Even the models now stay here year-round. For some, like Miami Heat center Shaquille O'Neal, the scene has gotten to be too much. Tired of the tour boats parading by his Star Island mansion all day, he put the $32 million house on the market. As if to taunt rubberneckers, a doll version of his Shaqness sits atop a nearby dock.

But all excess all the time is nothing but good news for Capponi, whose name is spelled out like an action hero's on Mansion's marquee. His parties gross about $12 million to $15 million per year, of which he takes a respectful cut. If you're not present at one of his events- Wednesdays at B.E.D., Thursdays at Hotel Victor, or Friday's at Prive- you might as well be fast asleep. So what keeps the party going seven nights a week? Is it the world-class DJ's? The bevy of surgically enhanced women? Actually, it's something simpler. "It's gotten to the stage in Miami that a lot of people don't work and don't have commitments," says a woman in the scene. "And you're out until 4:30 A.M. How do you stay up? Are you nocturnal? No, you're on drugs!"

On an early-summer evening, Jorge Perez is throwing a cocktail party for a hole in the ground. It isn't just any cavity of dirt that Perez and his 50 guest are toasting but the future locale of Apogee, the latest luxury-apartment complex from Perez's Related Group of Florida , Miami Beach 's biggest developer. Although there isn't so much as a steel beam on the site, one of the last waterfront parcels south of Fifth Street, Perez has already rung up nearly $350 million in sales. Condos will range from $4 million to $15 million for full-floor residences replete with amenities like flat-screen TV's in the bathrooms and a bedroom "romance button" that will lower the blinds, turn on music, and start a fire in the fireplace.

Perhaps more than any of the city's developers, Perez and his company counter the small-scale, Art Deco vision of Tony Goldman, the urban planner who helped renovate South Beach in the eighties. "This is the Rolls, and everything else is a Yugo," says one of Perez's sales executives, referring to the Apogee. The analogy isn't exactly fair. Perez's other properties, "Yugos" such as Icon Brickell- designed by Phillipe Starck- Murano at Portofino , and Yacht Club, are monuments to grand, super-size opulence. They helped the Related Group double its sales in 2004, raking in more than $2 billion, and Related currently has another $10 billion worth of projects in development.

So who's moving into all these apartments? By some accounts, nearly half are sold to New Yorkers. "It feels to me that South Beach is more of a fifth borough than Staten Island ," says David Edelstein, who's developing W South Beach Resort and Residences with Perez. Edelstein points out that boutique airlines such as JetBlue, Ted, and Song have cornered the market on frequent daily flights to Miami , providing a kind of snow-to-sun conveyer belt.

Not surprisingly, Perez is often described as the Donald Trump of South Florida . The comparison is apt, except that the Argentine-born Perez is affable, has a decent haircut, and owns a lot more land. I ask Perez how he can keep topping himself. "I don't know," he says. Apogee is such a landmark building that it requires its own slogan: "More than you need. All that you desire." Perez's next building could only be located above the Earth's atmosphere; he could call it Lunar.

Before there was Jorge Perez, there was Thomas Kramer, the son of a wealthy German stock trader who began gobbling up land in Miami Beach in 1992 on a $100 million buying spree. In 1993, he bought 45 acres in South Pointe. Since then he's been parceling out the land at a major profit to Perez, making the 48-year-old Kramer a billionaire. Nowadays he's better known as a playboy than as a real-estate baron. When I first meet him at a friend's pool party on Sunset Island , I ask him what he did earlier that day. An imposingly Teutonic blond, Kramer says without missing a beat: "Fuck."

He's joined this afternoon by his pal Chapman Ducote, who was recently named Miami 's premier "Bad Boy" by Ocean Drive Magazine, a title that once belonged to Kramer. A former stock trader from New Orleans , the 30-year-old Ducote resembles Colin Farrell in Alexander. Ducote helped Kramer conceive a reality show called Totally Kooked, which Ducote describes as Martha Stewart meets Howard Stern. Some cable networks may be interested. Listening to Ducote tell of his sexual conquests, it's easy to understand what kind of show the two would produce. He tells me a story about his birthday party held earlier this year, where he had a doorman keep track of the sex of people as they arrived. "We figured out there were 8.2 girls to every guy," he says, estimating that he has slept with 50 of the 600 women who were at the party. I ask how he's fared with the beautiful creatures that currently reside next to the pool. "This is a rare moment," he admits. "Only two."

Later, Kramer leads me on a tour of his Star Island mansion. He's taken to calling me by the name of the magazine. "Detailer!" he yells, pointing to a sign outside his bedroom: SEX. If the red light is on outside Kramer's bedroom, then he's having sex (seriously). Except now the thing isn't working. Kramer yells for his butler: "Rodolfo!" (He keeps a full-time staff of 18 on three shifts.) It turns out the batteries in the sign are dead, most likely from continuous use. In the bathroom Kramer points to a sunken whirlpool. "Normally you have a problem putting pussies over a water jet," he says. "So we moved the jets into the seat." He doubles over laughing at his own joke.

Next he directs me to the sex swing he's just had attached to the ceiling above his bed. The rumor that Kramer stores every sex toy imaginable inside a coffin turns out to be false- they're stored in a fairly plain trunk. Another bedroom, which he calls the recovery room, is decorated with painted angels. "For the ones who pass out in my bedroom from overindulging," he says.

Finally, secured inside a room accessible only by a handprint reader, is a collection of weapons that would make Tony Montana envious. There are handguns, including a Desert Eagle, machine guns, including a Heckler and Koch MP5, and a bazooka. "If tanks come," Kramer says in all seriousness, "you have to protect yourself."

Later that night we sit down to dinner with Ducote and a gaggle of women of indeterminate ages and professions. (One says to me, "I'll be your girlfriend for the night.") Kramer constantly fidgets, moving around the table, checking the German potatoes, groping the women, stirring a mushroom sauce, yelling and slapping. Afterwards he plays DVDs on a flat screen: a video of his last birthday affair, the "Mother of All Parties," which is also available on his website, Thomaskramer.com; a promo for Totally Kooked (the name seems appropriate, but it's hard to figure out what it's about), and a video of Kramer and his pals shooting cars in the Everglades. Then, just as it's time to fire up the red light and who knows what else, I'm shown the door.

At 5A.M. at Mansion, with sunrise only an hour away, the club is still half full when the music abruptly stops and the house lights are switched on. The party hasn't stopped; it's merely on pause. In a few hours it'll be time for real estate, Miami 's favorite daylight activity, where, like the city itself, today's Rolls-Royce could be tomorrow's Yugo.