June 06--SouthStreet. Cooper Avenue. Bond Street.

You'll have to take a detour: each local restaurant, named as a thoroughfare, is now shuttered.

The recent closure of the three high profile restaurants -- all launched by Miami real estate investor/restauranteur Amir Ben-Zion, with a variety of business partners -- caught some scene watchers' by surprise.

Despite the timing, each closed for a different reason, Ben-Zion said. Plans call for reopening each, although in different renditions.

On Wednesday, the Miami Beach City Commission approved an amended lease for the Cooper Avenue space, allowing Ben-Zion to walk away, and his former partner and two new partners to open an upscale restaurant with Miami Beach's first microbrewery. The other two restaurants are expected to move to new locations, though no locations have been determined.

Analysts say turnover is part of the restaurant business, and dining establishments have one of the highest failure rates of any retail operation.

"The majority of restaurants undergo major renovation or change within 10 or 15 years, or they go out of business," said Ron Paul, president of Technomic, a Chicago-based research and consulting firm for the hospitality industry.

Ben-Zion, a Wynwood and Design District pioneer, was born into a restaurant family: his grandmother ran a major catering business in Tel Aviv, and his mother owned several top-rated restaurants there, he said.

"In the restaurant business, you open and close restaurants all the time," said Ben-Zion, who currently owns Asian-inspired, casual dining spot Gigi and the bar Bardot, both in Wynwood. Previously, he co-owned Miss Yip on Miami Beach before selling it five years ago.

"I grew up in this business so it's a part of me, whether I like it or not," said Ben-Zion, who lives in Morningside.

The most recent of his eateries to close was Bond Street, a chic sushi restaurant that opened in the basement floor of the Townhouse Hotel on Miami Beach in 2000. The restaurant shut its doors June 2, after Ben-Zion and his partners sold their lease on the property, the Townhouse Hotel, to other investors.

Popular with locals, the eatery was an offshoot of the Bond Street in New York, owned by one of Ben-Zion's partners. The group did not sell the brand and will decide by September where to reopen in Miami Beach, Ben-Zion said.

SouthStreet, a partnership between Ben-Zion and luxury home manager Amaris Jones, closed a few weeks ago. The self-proclaimed "neo-soul" restaurant in the Design District's historic Buena Vista post office building that previously housed Sra. Martinez and Domo Japones.

But it fell victim to sky-high rent when its landlord admittedly raised the rate to $500,000 a year -- or $218 a square foot for the 2,287 square-foot space, in hopes of attracting an international luxury retailer.

"We quoted him a number and he said it didn't make sense, and we agreed to buy him out of the lease; we let him go," said Lyle Chariff, president of Chariff Realty Group, which manages and leases the building. "We knew the number didn't justify a restaurant."

Ben-Zion had first leased the space, which can only accommodate a small kitchen, more than six years ago, with the idea of launching Bardot. But because of the building's proximity to a school, he couldn't get a full liquor license. So he opened Domo Japones.

After that restaurant closed in 2008, he became a business partner with Michelle Bernstein to open Sra. Martinez, which ended its run last July. He then partnered with Jones to open SouthStreet in October, which only lasted about seven months. Closing the space was, he said, "a business decision....The landlord offered us money to exit, and it was an opportunity to not get into the summer," when many restaurants struggle.

Chariff is now negotiating to lease the space to a luxury brand. "He was never late on the rent, always 100 percent honorable," Chariff said of Ben-Zion. "When he said he would do something, it always got done."

In its short life, SouthStreet drew such notables as Martha Stewart and Gabrielle Union, as well as Kim Kardashian, Ben-Zion said. "We became the place where African-American politicians, celebrities, athletes and probably every mixed couple in Miami found a home, and we realized we had a brand."

Craig Robins, president and chief executive of Dacra, which is redeveloping the Design District as a luxury destination, said he was "very sorry" to see SouthStreet close. "It just added another special dimension to the neighborhood," he said.

Ben-Zion said he and Jones are looking for new space and plan to reopen the restaurant by the end of the year in either Miami or Miami Beach.

Cooper Avenue, which opened last October, had an even shorter life than SouthStreet -- just 10 weeks.

With nearly 8,000-square-feet, the space housed a restaurant, deli, bakery, market and boutique, in the ground floor of the garage in the Frank Gehry-designed New World Center in Miami Beach.

By Ben-Zion's account, air conditioning problems in the city-leased space killed the business. It was too hot to operate, he said.

But the city was left holding the bag on months of rent. After lengthy negotiations, on Wednesday the city commission approved an amendment to the restaurant's lease, allowing Ben-Zion to walk away and his previous Russian partner Roman Cherstvov and his new partners, Eugene Alekseychenko and Oleg Elyutin, of OBL Project, to take over the space.

The agreement, approved at Wednesday's commission meeting, also allows for the new tenants to repay months of partially deferred rent on a multi-year schedule. Meanwhile, the new tenants will pay to move the air conditioning system. And the city will pay up to $250,000 to relocate the restaurant's kitchen exhaust ventilation system, which was causing problems for the New World Symphony.

Next, the new owners plan to turn the space into an upscale meat and seafood restaurant as well as Miami Beach's first microbrewery, slated to open in November, said Alekseychenko, whose group owns 15 restaurants, including Soprano Cafe in North Miami Beach, two food court establishments at Aventura Mall and 12 restaurants in Russia.

___

(c)2013 The Miami Herald

Visit The Miami Herald at www.miamiherald.com

Distributed by MCT Information Services NYSE:LTD,