Bomb scare briefly shuts down Port Authority

Manhattan’s Port Authority Bus Terminal went into lockdown tonight amid a bomb scare, authorities said.

Two suspicious packages were found near the Greyhound bus terminal in the South Building at 40th Street and Ninth Avenue in Manhattan before 8:30 p.m. — prompting the NYPD bomb squad to swoop in to investigate, officials said.

One of the packages was found to be empty — and the other contained four novelty grenades, or replicas without explosives, sources said.

“No one would have been injured unless the box landed on your head,’’ one law-enforcement source chuckled.

The package with the toy grenades was intended to be mailed to someone, the source added.

The terminal, which had been briefly evacuated, was later reopened.

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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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Eye doctor Salomon Melgen lost $68M in investments

It wasn’t just New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez and other Democratic politicians who got big checks from Dr. Salomon Melgen.

The $1.1 million that the prominent North Palm Beach eye doctor has steered toward candidates and political committees since the 1990s pales in comparison with the tens of millions of dollars Melgen has invested — and sometimes lost — in entities ranging from Wall Street firms to a wildly successful data business to a failed online fantasy sports site.

Melgen is the plaintiff in a variety of state and federal lawsuits that claim that he, his wife, Flor, and a Melgen-controlled business have sustained about $68 million in investment losses over the past decade. In each case, Melgen says he lost money as a result of misrepresentations or fraud by individuals or the businesses in which he invested.

Melgen has been in the national spotlight since agents from the FBI and federal Department of Health and Human Services raided his West Palm Beach office last month and hauled away dozens of boxes of materials.

“Until the government executed a search warrant last week, Dr. Melgen had no knowledge of any government investigation. Dr. Melgen is cooperating fully with the government and has yet to receive any notice from the government as to what it is investigating,” Melgen attorney Alan Reider said last week.

“In the ordinary course of business as a Medicare provider, Dr. Melgen’s claims are subject to review by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and its contractors. Like many physicians, Dr. Melgen has been subject to these routine audits. Those audits have been resolved administratively, consistent with Medicare requirements,” Reider said.

Menendez, who has received more than $700,000 in direct and indirect campaign help from Melgen and has made personal trips to the Dominican Republic on Melgen’s private plane, acknowledged last week that his office contacted CMS and “raised concerns” about billing policies in 2009 and 2012. But Menendez denied trying to intervene with government regulators on Melgen’s behalf.

Melgen family members gave $33,700 to Menendez’s 2012 reelection campaign, $50,000 to the New Jersey Democratic State Committee and $60,400 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee while Menendez was its chairman during the 2010 election cycle. Melgen’s Vitreo-Retinal Consultants also gave $700,000 last year to Majority PAC, a Democratic super PAC that poured $582,500 into Menendez’s reelection efforts.

Menendez flew to the Dominican Republic on Melgen’s plane for two personal trips in 2010. Menendez did not report the flights as gifts, prompting New Jersey Republicans to file an ethics complaint in November. Menendez recently said he reimbursed Melgen $58,500 for the flights in January, attributing the delay in paying for them to an oversight.

Melgen can afford a private plane, multimillion-dollar investments and big political contributions because of business success apart from his medical practice, said attorney Jack Scarola, who has represented Melgen in a variety of matters over the years.

Melgen’s résumé says he was a co-founder of Seisint, a data company that was purchased by LexisNexis for $775 million in 2004. Seisint created a data-mining tool that it said could help law enforcement track down terrorists.

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2013 Grammy Winners List

Tonight, the Recording Academy hosts this year's nominated artists for music's biggest night, the 2013 Grammy Awards! ET is bringing you the winners announced on the show below. (Winners underlined). For the complete list of winners, check the Grammy Awards site, after the show.

Record of the Year:

The Black Keys, Lonely Boy

Kelly Clarkson, Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)

fun., Tonight

Goyte, Somebody I Used to Know

Frank Ocean, Think About You

Taylor Swift, We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together

Best New Artist:

Alabama Shakes

fun.

Hunter Hayes

The Lumineers

Frank Ocean

Album of the Year:

The Black Keys, El Camino

fun., Some Nights

Mumford & Sons, Babel

Frank Ocean, Channel Orange

Jack White, Blunderbuss

Song of the Year:

Ed Sheeran, The A Team

Miguel, Adorn

Carly Rae Jepsen, Call Me Maybe

Kelly Clarkson, Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)

Fun., We Are Young

Best Pop Solo Performance:

Adele, Set Fire to the Rain (Live)

Kelly Clarkson, Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)

Carly Rae Jepsen, Call Me Maybe

Katy Perry, Wide Awake

Rihanna, Where Have You Been

Country Solo Performance:

Dierks Bentley, Home

Eric Church, Springsteen

Ronnie Dunn, Cost of Livin'

Hunter Hayes, Wanted

Blake Shelton, Over

Carrie Underwood, Blown Away

Best Urban Contemporary Album:

Chris Brown, Fortune

Miguel, Kaleidoscope Dream

Frank Ocean, Channel Orange

Best Rock Performance:

Alabama Shakes, Hold On

The Black Keys, Lonely Boy

Coldplay, Charlie Brown

Mumford & Sons, I Will Wait

Bruce Springsteen, We Take Care of Our Own

Pop Vocal Album:

Kelly Clarkson, Stronger

Florence + the Machine, Ceremonial

fun., Some Nights

Maroon 5, Overexposed

Pink, The Truth About Love

Best Rap/Sung Collaboration:

Flo Rida feat. Sia, Wild Ones

Jay-Z & Kanye West feat. Frank Ocean & The-Dream, No Church in the Wild

John Legend feat. Ludacris, Tonight (Best You Ever Had)

Nas feat. Amy Whinehouse, Cherry Wine

Rihanna feat. Jay-Z, Talk That Talk

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Houseboat man found dead under dock in Brooklyn

The body of an elderly man who lived on a houseboat was found floating under a dock today in Brooklyn, authorities said.

The 74-year-old man’s boat was docked in the Plumb Beach Channel off of Ebony Court in Gerritsen Beach when he he was spotted in the water around 12:35 p.m., cops said.

He was pronounced dead at the scene. Police do not suspect any criminality at this time, cops said.

The city’s medical examiner will determine the cause of death.

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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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Cashing in on state contracts becomes growth industry

TALLAHASSEE --
Even for Tallahassee standards, the scene was notable: lobbyist Brian Ballard dining with a nursing home executive, Gov. Rick Scott and a top aide at a pricey restaurant just blocks from the Capitol.

That Ballard’s clout could command a private dinner with the governor for a client speaks to the influential lobbyist’s fundraising finesse. But equally important, and less celebrated, is Ballard’s talent for helping his clients land lucrative state contracts: $938 million this year alone, according to a Herald/Times analysis of contracts in the $70 billion state budget.

“Is that all?’’ joked Ballard, who said he had never added it up. “A big part of my business is protecting contracts, and outsourcing. Outsourcing saves [the state] money.”

Ballard is not alone. The lobbying offices that line the moss-covered streets of Tallahassee have grown exponentially larger in the last two decades as governors and legislators have steered a greater share of the state’s budget to outside vendors.

No one is keeping track of the total, but Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater last year estimated the total contract spend for Florida’s 2011-12 budget cycle at $50.4 billon — 72 percent of the budget. The bulk of it, nearly $42 billion, was for health care contracts and service sector grants that often are never competitively bid.

“We probably privatize, or outsource, more than some of the Northeastern states — and we have a lot more volume,’’ said David Wilkins, a retired business executive who was tapped by the governor to review the state’s byzantine contracting process. He also is secretary of the Department of Children and Families.

Vendors — from giant computer firms and health care HMOs, to purveyors of office supplies, parking spaces and even prison services — each compete for a piece of one of the biggest spending pies in the Southeast: the state of Florida. The infusion of state cash into private and non-profit industries has spawned a cottage industry of lobbyists who help vendors manage the labyrinth of rules and build relationships with executive agency officers and staff so they can steer contracts to their clients.

There are now more people registered to lobby the governor, the Cabinet and their agencies — 4,925 — than there are registered to lobby the 160-member Legislature — 3,235.

Dozens of former legislators and their staff populate that industry, as well as former utility regulators, agency secretaries, division heads and other employees.

The most high-profile newcomer to the executive branch lobbying corps is Dean Cannon, the former speaker of the House from Orlando. Even before he retired from office in November, he had set up a lobbying shop just a block from the Capitol and started signing up clients to lobby the executive branch.

Cannon’s swift lawmaker-to-lobbyist turnaround has spawned a backlash from former colleagues. Senators are proposing that lawmakers leaving office wait two years before they can lobby the executive branch — similar to the aw that applies to former lawmakers who lobby the legislature.

“One minute you can be overseeing a budget and the next you’re lobbying a state agency,’’ said Sen. Jack Latvala, R-St. Petersburg, who is shepherding the Senate ethics bill. “That’s a revolving door and that’s wrong.”

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Double Take Celebrity Lookalikes

Stacy Keibler and Heidi Klum

ETonline has found the lookalikes to the stars and, it turns out, it's
their Hollywood peers. Click the pics and let us know if you think these
celebs bear a resemblance to one another. 

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Child, 8, reportedly killed in LI apartment fire, more than 200 left homeless

HEMPSTEAD — Police say an apartment fire that spread to several buildings has forced 250 people from their homes, killed one and sent 11 to hospitals on Long Island.

Nassau County police say one victim is in critical condition after fire Saturday morning in Hempstead. The rest have injuries that aren't seen as life-threatening.

Police haven't released the identity of the person who died. Newsday says that victim is an 8-year-old boy, and another is a pregnant woman who suffered a heart attack.

Detectives are trying to determine what caused the fire. They don't believe it was set deliberately. It started in a third-floor apartment on Paul Road North around 6:20 a.m.

Some 300 firefighters were called in from 13 departments. It took several hours to extinguish the fire.

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Mega mansion frenzy: Buyer snaps up Pat Riley’s $16M home to level it, rebuild

Miami Heat President Pat Riley sold his spectacular bayfront mansion in gated Gables Estates for $16.8 million last March.

The 12,856-square-foot Mediterranean-style dream house at 180 Arvida Parkway has a theater, wine cellar, library, and a sprawling pool with waterfalls and an aqua bar.

But that’s all coming down.

Turns out the lure was the lot: a rare fingertip of prime land, nearly two acres, jutting into the turquoise waters of Biscayne Bay.

In December, the buyer — listed as 180 Arvida LLC represented by Miami attorney Mark Hasner — presented the City of Coral Gables with plans to tear down the home, built in 1991, and erect an even grander estate along the 900 linear feet of bayfront.

“Most people would move in and be perfectly happy, but clients are looking for perfection — really good stuff,” said Jorge Uribe, a senior vice president at One Sotheby’s International Realty, who wasn’t involved but sold an even bigger trophy property last year: a $39.4 million estate at 14 Indian Creek Dr., on Indian Creek Island in Miami Beach, dubbed “Miami’s Billionaire Bunker” by Forbes magazine.

“The trend in the last several years is a demand for very high-quality product. People are looking for really good locations, really good materials, and they’re willing to pay for it,” Uribe said.

Miami’s ultra-luxury market is on fire. Prices for the fanciest single-family homes and condominiums have soared to levels never before seen in the area, fueled by strong foreign demand and renewed interest from New Yorkers and others in the Northeast.

With Miami’s global image burnished by Art Basel Miami Beach and the debut of other cultural and entertainment venues, the city is emerging as an even greater magnet for the world’s super-rich.

In January, a penthouse at the Setai Resort & Residences on Miami Beach fetched $27 million, a new high for a Miami-Dade condominium. “Every building we do business in is at its highest price of all time,” said Mark Zilbert, president of Zilbert International Realty, which represented the buyer in the Setai deal.

Last August, a sleek, new home, built on spec at 3 Indian Creek Dr., sold for $47 million, a record high for a Miami-Dade residence. The buyer, whose identity has not been revealed, is Russian.

“People are realizing how valuable the bay waterfront is,” said Oren Alexander, co-founder of the Alexander Group at Douglas Elliman Real Estate, who co-listed the 3 Indian Creek property with The Jills team at Coldwell Banker and represented the buyer for the home. His father, Shlomy Alexander, developed the property with partner Felix Cohen.

Shlomy Alexander is working on two more extravagant spec homes — one at 30 Indian Creek Dr. and a second that is set to break ground shortly at 252 Bal Bay Dr. in Bal Harbour, his son said. Plans envision a tropical modern-style project that fuses the indoors and outdoors — a concept popular in Brazil.

Th elder Alexander recently traveled to Italy to shop for exclusive stone for the projects, said the son.

“It’s really trending to the ultra-luxury. All sorts of exotic materials — exotic woods, exotic marbles, exotic stones,” said Sean Murphy, an executive vice president at Coastal Construction, a major builder of luxury hotels and condominiums that also has erected some of the most extravagant mansions in the region. “Everything is so exotic.”

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