Fortune International Group, the Miami development firm led by Edgardo Defortuna, has landed a deep-pocketed equity partner for its long-running ORA by Casa Tua tower in Brickell. One United Properties, the Bucharest-listed developer known as Romania’s leading green investor in residential, mixed-use and office real estate, has joined the venture with a $43 million injection, according to announcements published on Monday and covered by The Real Deal and the South Florida Business Journal. It is the Romanian firm’s first South Florida project.
ORA by Casa Tua is a planned 77-story, Arquitectonica-designed tower on Brickell Avenue — a condo-hotel that pairs fully furnished residences with the hospitality programming of Casa Tua, the members-only club and restaurant brand founded by Miky Grendene. Fortune acquired the development site, a pair of Brickell properties, for $31.2 million in 2024, and sales opened roughly three years ago. The building is scheduled for completion in 2029 and will comprise 533 furnished residences that permit short-term rentals — a structure aimed squarely at buyers who want resort services without owner-occupancy restrictions.
Food is the project’s signature. Casa Tua will operate four on-site restaurant concepts — Terra, Uva, Fuoco and Vento — including what’s been billed as Miami’s tallest rooftop restaurant, arranged around a three-story sky garden with interiors by Milan-based m2atelier. The branding has already drawn recognizable buyers; baseball great David Ortiz purchased a unit at the sales gallery last year, a marketing coup the development team has leaned on as sales progressed.
The capital raise tells its own story about Miami’s condo market. Fortune had earlier turned to the federal EB-5 investor-visa program to help fund the tower, filing to raise foreign capital in exchange for green cards — a common but increasingly scrutinized financing route for South Florida projects. Landing a $43 million institutional co-investment from a European-listed developer now gives the project a more conventional equity base at a time when lenders have grown selective about speculative condo construction. Commercial Observer framed the deal as Fortune securing the equity partner it had sought since launching sales.
For One United Properties, the move marks a first entry into the American market. The company, which trades on the Bucharest Stock Exchange under the ticker ONE, has built its reputation on large-scale residential and office developments in Bucharest and has been expanding internationally; choosing Miami places it among a growing roster of European capital — from Spanish and Italian family offices to UK funders — that has flowed into Brickell’s condo pipeline. The firm said it entered the venture as a partner to Fortune International Group in the residential and mixed-use development, without disclosing its full ownership stake.
The broader context is Brickell’s continuing build-out as Miami’s financial district skyline keeps stretching upward. ORA joins a corridor of supertall proposals rising along Brickell Avenue, where branded residences have become the dominant product type and hospitality names now routinely anchor sales. For Defortuna, the partnership de-risks a project that has been in the sales pipeline since 2023; for the Romanian newcomer, it buys a marquee address in the one Miami submarket where 77 stories no longer raises eyebrows. Construction timetables and the tower’s full capital stack will now draw attention as the project moves from sales gallery toward ground-breaking.
