Tennis Pro Andy Murray Unloads Condo at Jade Brickell
Andy Murray’s Condo at Jade Brickell.
Tennis pro Andy Murray, currently ranked the #2 tennis player in the world and a 2012 Olympic gold medalist, is selling his $2.9 million 45th floor unit at Jade at Brickell Bay, according to Variety’s Real Estalker. The Scotsman picked up the unit, with distant views of the tennis center at Crandon Park, in July 2008 for $1.575 million, must have used Jade Brickell Unit #4501 as a vacation home since then (as evidenced by the limited interior decoration and kitschy Union Jack pillow as a memory of home), finally listing it for $2.9 million. MLS data now indicates a sale is pending.
Since setting up camp at Jade, Murray picked up two UK homes, including a ‘mock-Regency’ outside London, and a 19th century Victorian mansion called Cromlix house outside his hometown of Dublane. Just like many a local boy gone big, yes even Murray returned home to nab the village manor. Museum or not, just think of how many a very young Miamian has walked into Vizcaya and thought “someday I’ll buy this place.” No word yet on whether Murray is finding somewhere else to stick his flagpole in Miami, or going home to play ‘country squire’ full time.
AirBnB is Killing it in Miami Despite Patchy Legal Landscape
A Miami AirBnB
Miami is AirBnB’s fifth largest market in the U.S. The short-term home rental app is killing it down here, where hundreds, possibly thousands of small South Beach apartments are rented out on a nightly basis to tourists from across the world. It’s not just the beach that’s raking in the dollars though. “Miami is one of our largest U.S. markets and certainly a broader part of our strategy,” Christopher Nully, a spokesperson for Airbnb, told The Real Deal, which took a deeper look into the future of the company’s presence in Miami. “We really see increased growth in the market, but not just along the beach.” And this is all happening despite a patchy legal landscape, where short term rentals are allowed to varying degrees in various South Florida municipalities, and enforcement is highly uneven.
So, is the AirBnB landscape really as much like the Wild West as it sounds? Well, kind of yeah. It’s a system so unstreamlined that “I’m not sure anyone knows how to deal with it,” said Joe Hernandez, head of the real estate group at Weiss Serota also told Real Deal. Meanwhile, the hotel industry feels “under attack,” as Russell Galbut, partner in hotels such as the Gale, and the Shelborne, said while at a panel recently.
Miami Beach Community Church Courtyard Demolished
Over the last few weeks demolition began at the Miami Beach Community Church’s courtyard at the corner of Lincoln Road and Drexel Avenue. The courtyard was the sight of a heated historic preservation feud pitting preservationists and open space advocates against developer TriStar Capital planning to build a three-level retail building designed by architecture firm Touzet Studio. The preservationists lost and now the site is being prepped for construction. The future structure will have multiple levels of prime retail space with glass frontages and an art deco-inspired corner treatment that mirrors the 420 Building across the street. There will also be a rooftop garden space. The project will include lighting and landscape improvements to the church’s facade as well.
Will Smith Spotted Condo Shopping at Zaha’s One Thousand Museum
Will Smith back in the day.
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air himself, Will Smith was spotted shopping for a condo at One Thousand Museum, designed by the late Zaha Hadid, the New York Post reported today. This juicy little bit of celebrity gossip is corroborated with a photo The Next Miami post of the encounter yesterday, showing a much older/not nearly as fresh Fresh Prince in bright red shorts and a Dad-polo shaking hands with the sales team. There’s no word yet on what he thought of the building.
Babylon Apartments Demolition Blocked… For Now
Babylon Apartments. Photo by Phillip Pessar.
The City of Miami’s historic preservation board voted Tuesday evening to block demolition of the iconic Babylon Apartments on Brickell Bay Drive, which is one of architecture firm Arquitectonica’s very first buildings and one of its most iconic. Although the owner, Francisco “Paco” Martinez, who once stared in old spaghetti western movies under the name George Martin, was able to get the City of Miami to condemn the structure, the preservation board unanimously voted to consider preservation a day before Paco was to get his demolition permit. This places a 120 day moratorium on demolition, giving city staff time to further consider the historic importance of the building.
Since its age falls significantly short of the standard 50-year cutoff for historic preservation, the structure must meet a higher bar of “exceptional importance” to warrant historic designation. (It was designed in 1979 and completed in 1982) Preservationists, however, argue that is exactly what it is. “Few dispute the architectural originality of the small Brickell apartment building, distinguished by its vivid red, ziggurat-shaped face, its key role in shaping the redevelopment of Brickell as an urban residential district in the 1980s, or its role in gaining a worldwide rep for the young Arquitectonica.” writes Andres Viglucci in the Miami Herald. Meanwhile, prominent historian Arva Moore Parks calls the Babylon “truly an iconic building.” The Babylon stands among the Atlantis, the Pink House, and the Palace Condominium, as Arquitectonica’s most iconic early buildings, which themselves set the stylistic tone for Miami in the ’80s.
Taxi Companies Are Suing Miami-Dade for Legalizing Uber and Lyft
Photo via Chris Goldberg/Flickr
Yesterday Uber and Lyft were both legalized in Miami-Dade County, following years of legal wrangling and a county commission vote of 9-2 strongly in their favor. The law allowing Uber and Lyft on the roads officially will take ten days to go into effect, but for taxi companies the fight isn’t over yet. In a last ditch effort, they have sued Miami-Dade County for $1 billion in lost medallion values. Is the county worried? Apparently, not really. Similar legal action in New York was unsuccessful. “We can’t be held hostage,” Mayor Gimenez told the Miami Herald Tuesday evening. “That was something they were hanging over our heads for a long time, to scare us. There’s been legal action around the country. We’ll take that on, too.”
Kukaramakara Moving into Revolving Door Retail Space at 900 Biscayne
Kukaramakara. Photo by Lucas Lechuga
The ground-floor retail/restaurant space at 900 Biscayne Bay has had a series of tenants sine the building’s completion in 2008. but will the building’s latest entree be the right fit? Kukaramakara, a live band venue just opened over the past weekend. Up until 2 or 3 weeks ago, the space was occupied by Libar Steakhouse, before that Doma Polo Bistro, and before that another place, which, if we remember correctly, was an Argentinian restaurant. Meanwhile the space itself was put on the market for sale earlier this year.
The space is a great example of the amount of retail turnover on this stretch of Biscayne Boulevard, the so-called Biscayne Boulevard wall. The Marquis had a hotel, and now it’s about to have another hotel. 888 Biscayne Boulevard/Marina Blue is getting a CVS in their corner space. The ground floor retail space at Ten Museum Park has never had tenant. And soon One Thousand Museum will be adding more retail square footage to the row. With new construction happening nearby, a neighborhood in transition, and lots of traffic along Biscayne Boulevard, when will the stretch reach some stability?
Did a Kaleidoscope Explode in This Modernist Condo?
Santa Maria condominiums, one of Brickell’s most stalwart high-end condo towers, is where you would be likely to find somewhat predictable interior design choices, liked overstuffed club chairs and wainscoting set off by a Dale Chihuly chandelier. Unit 1643, priced at $5.5 million, has none of those things. Instead it’s a white box condo with bold, solid colors, and geometric designs selectively streaked over walls, ceilings, and floors. The dining room comes in a black & white diamond pattern. There are yellow checkerboard-ish walls in a bathroom. The kids’ rooms are colorful, as kids’ rooms tend to be, and the kitchen is triangular. Out in the living room, a giant circular black rug and three-piece yellow couch dominate the space, while on the balcony the ottomans are made of grass.
UberPOOL Prices Lowered Again for Urbanite Miamians
UberPOOL, the least expensive and most egalitarian version of Uber, is now up to 80% off for rides in Downtown Miami, Brickell, Miami Beach, Coconut Grove, Key Biscayne, Coral Gables, and every location within the Miami Request Zone. That means that if you live in Brickell but want to make it over to to South Beach but don’t mind sharing a car with a stranger or two you’r paying a fraction off what you had to pay before. Checking earlier today, UberPOOL was offering a ride from South Beach to Downtown for just over $2. A more recent check showed the price had risen slightly to $3-something, while an estimate for UberX (the second-least expensive version) came in at just over $7. This could be what travel pricing looks like in the brave new world, heavily based on distance and economy. When an Uber ride costs about the same as the bus, nevermind parking, is when Miami transportation rules really start to change.
UPDATE: Uber and competitor Lyft are now legal in Miami.
Map via Uber
Michael Dezer’s New Car Warehouse Says a Lot About the Relationship Between Men and Their Cars
Photo via Google Street View
They say men who buy big cars have small… feet, but how about men who have dozens and dozens? Developer Michael Dezer has purchased a warehouse at 5320 Powerline Road in Fort Lauderdale where he intends to hold some of his-ever expanding car collection. That is, after Dezer gets out the building’s current occupants, a place called ‘Dirt Cheap‘ with a picture of a chicken, out front. ‘Dirt Cheap’ is a chain of highly discounted retailers, not a chicken processing plant, so the chicken doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense. However, if Dezer could (or would) leave the sign up with his fleet of cars parked around around, the self-effacing euphemism of it all would be great. Let’s hope his sense of humor is bigger than some men’s feet. The warehouse cost him $3.6 million.
