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UPDATE: Despite Its Giant Moat, Even Private Island Privé Has NIMBYs

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Island Estates residents are suing Gary Cohen, the developer of their luxury community, to prevent the planned, two-tower, 160-residence Privé from being built on a neighboring island attached by a road.

The Sieger Suarez designs call for twin, 16-story glass towers with a raised, glass floor-to-ceiling lobby and the first residential floor perched 68 feet above sea level. The rest of the eight acres would contain typical gated community amenities.

Curiously, both of the developments' websites lead to the same web address: mypriveisland.com, with lifelike renderings of men in button-down shirts open far beyond the collar and women in matching white silk enjoying the 280-or-so-degree views of the Intracoastal Waterway. The island has been christened (and trademarked) Privé.

Island Estates residents complain that Cohen sold them on their lots by promising that the north island would only ever be developed for single-family homes in the style of a Star Island, according to David Satterfield, a p.r. flak working with the homeowners' association.

"Is it NIMBY? Yeah, but it's also holding the very guy who sold them the lots to the promises he made to them," Satterfield told Curbed Miami.

Cohen and his partners responded to the suit by asserting that residents "shouldn't have purchased their homes without first confirming that the original plans for the adjoining island were irreversible," the Miami Herald reports. Ooh, that's cold.

· Aventura Island Enclave Threatened By Condo Plan [Miami Herald]
· Privé coverage [Curbed Miami]