Gloriously Gauche $21 Million Fisher Island Condo Comes With ‘Romanov Room’
The Romanov Room?
The glory, and the onerous class snobbery, of the Tsars lives on in this tacky and tchochke-filled condo on Fisher Island, on the market for $21 million. The wood-beamed living room looks straight ouf of a dacha in the Urals, while the bedrooms, stuffed with enough throw pillows to make your head explode, have names. There’s the Romanov Room, the Swan Room, and the Sentinel Room. Listed by the Jills, who call it “spectacular” and a “work of art,” the place has been on the market for almost a year. The owner has, naturally hidden their identity behind and LLC, but we’ll bet you a balalaika (a triangular Russian guitar) he or she is a Russian oligarch.
Vizcaya is Restoring its Grotto Swimming Pool by Pioneering Modern Artist Robert Winthrop Chanler
Vizcaya’s swimming pool, courtesy Vizcaya.
Although Vizcaya Museum & Gardens was designed from the start to look old, ancient even, the estate from the beginning was always a showcase for cutting edge art. Some of the most exquisite, and provocative artists of the 1910s and ’20s were commissioned by James Dearing and his artist director Paul Chalfin to create adornments for Vizcaya, including a number of artists that exhibited at the famed Armory Show, which introduced European modernist and experimental artistic styles to the American art scene in 1913. It was one of the most important moments in all of art history. Included in that group was Robert Winthrop Chanler, who created ten extraordinary screens for the Armory Show, and the grotto-like interiors and ceiling of Vizcaya’s swimming pool.
The pool interiors depict surreal underwater worlds and sea life. An already fragile environment from the beginning (it was created with water-based paints even though an artist as acclaimed and talented as Chanler was should really have known better than to use them to decorate a pool) the partially enclosed swimming pool has taken a hundred years of abuse and is undergoing a restoration to maintain its beauty, reports the Miami New Times. Although the hope is to revert the piece to how it originally looked when completed in 1916, just three years after the Armory Show, the museum’s restorationists will have to satisfy themselves with the limitations of the years. “Removing the overlay of paint that has been done through the years isn’t possible,” curator Gina Wouters explains to the New Times. “Right now, the urgency is to stabilize it. The structure itself is now safe, so now it is about keeping what we have here in one piece, like the clay structures.”
Next comes historical documentation with a pair of graduate students in the fall, figuring out how to protect it from hurricanes, and finally creating a trajectory that leads to the proper display of the interior, which right now can only be seen from a few vantage points. “The thing is,” Wouters says, “how you’re supposed to be experiencing it is within. That’s our next challenge. “Vizcaya is all about sensory experience,” she told the New Times. “It’s not just about coming here and looking at art. It’s about touching, tasting, smelling, seeing, and feeling — and at the same time, learning about Chanler and bringing awareness to this challenge of preservation too.”
Melo Group Unveils Giant Cliché Violin Outside Arsht Center
Photo courtesy Melo Group
Developer Jose Luis Melo loves a bad pun. The developer of predominantly bland apartment buildings in Edgewater and Downtown Miami, as well as a few not-so-bland newer projects, has installed an eight foot high polished stainless steel sculpture of a violin by artist Helidon Xhixha in front of his recently completed Melody Tower. There will be an official unveiling tomorrow so Mayor Regalado can give Melo a key to the city.
If you haven’t figured it out by now, Melo’s Melody Tower is located across the street from the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. Unfortunately the Melos didn’t draw any deeper creative inspiration from the Arsht for their Melody Tower beyond the violin and its name, because the building itself is little more than a white box with balconies and marginal decoration, but hey, a giant, eight foot tall violin is a giant eight foot tall violin, and Miami hasn’t had one of those before.
Brickell City Centre is Expanding North and East but Not West
An early rendering of Brickell City Centre.
When Swire Properties bought a small piece of land west of its Brickell City Centre megaproject, the Miami real estate media went bonkers. Everybody including the Miami Herald wondered if the megaproject was getting even bigger. And it is. Phase II is planned to include additional blocks to the north and east, including a ‘super tower’ on Brickell Avenue, but that’s all old news. That block off there to the west is just going to be a fire station they’re building for the City of Miami. Stephen Owens said as much at a recent conference, and The Next Miami dug up official documents confirming.
Check Out Fendi Chateau, Which is Almost Sold Out and Almost Done, From a Drone
Fendi Chateau Residences, a luxury condominium tower in Surfside, is almost finished, with completion expected in August or September. It’s also 88% sold out. Seen from our drone, the blue glass facade creates a fluid effect that could blend ocean and sky if not for the overwhelming chunky white columns that appear to bracket the building to the ground. Designed by Arquitectonica and developed by the Chateau Group, Fendi Chateau is one of those branded buildings aligned with a lustful and luxurious names that has nothing to do with real estate.Does your unit come with a Fendi ‘Baguette’ purse? No. It will, however, have a Fendi Casa kitchen. So, check out the full drone video below.
The Filling Station Lofts Goes Condo, Again
Filling Station Lofts, one of Miami’s more eclectic residential rental buildings built in the last two real estate cycles, is going condo again. Begun in the 2000s as an urban live/work condo bloc with large, double-height lofts and that ‘converted from an old factory’ look, it was very unusual for Miami. The project stalled in foreclosure as the condo bubble of 2008 busted, after an advertising and sales push called “Bubble Proof” that suggested a buyer’s desire to own a unique space, such as a loft in Miami, and not quick profits, should be the motivating factor behind making such a purchase.
That didn’t work, and the Filling Stations lofts stood as an empty concrete shell, one of those discards of the market crash, for a few years being resurrected by new developers and completed as a rental building in 2014. Now, with 75-percent occupancy, demand reflected in solid rental rates, and Fannie Mae mortgage approval, the Filling Station is going condo, again, according to the Real Deal. With questions looming about the softening condo market and a possible ‘correction,’ here’s to hoping history doesn’t repeat itself.
Icon Brickell’s Most Expensive Listing Stagnates, then the Big Pool Breaks
Unit 4601-2, the most expensive apartment for sale at Icon Brickell, located in the north tower, has been on the market for a solid year and four months, seeing multiple price drops along the way. Currently offered at $4 million, today however is still not its day. The pool broke big time, meaning a construction site downstairs for the next 12-14 months and assessment charges for everyone!
The 3,520 square foot bay front condo with fabulous views of Downtown, the bay, and the beach originally asked $4.8M when it was listed in February 2015. Reduced to $4.2M in May 2015 it was reduced again to $4M in July 2015. The listing expired for a month that summer and has stuck to its price ever since. Let’s see what happens next.
Leave your opinions of the destiny of Unit # 4601-2 in Icon Brickell Tower II in the comments!
What Will Icon Brickell’s Leaky Pool Do to Property Values?
The ongoing situation with Icon Brickell‘s leaky pool, the pool’s reconstruction, the fees being assessed to each unit’s owners to cover that cost, and the lawsuit seeking that money back, means a lot of people are asking questions about their property values. In three towers with a combined 1718 units, a hotel, restaurants, and a rooftop nightclub, that’s an army with a money problem. Here’s Lucas’ prediction:
“It’s to be expected that rental prices will be adversely affected by the pool repairs and renovations for the next 12-14 months or however long the project ends up taking to complete. Sales prices and rental prices are highly correlated, especially for a building such as Icon Brickell which has a high concentration of investor-owned units. As rental prices decrease, the overall return to investors will go down. In order to provide the same pre-assessment return to would-be buyers, the sale prices would need to come down.”
So once the pool’s done, everything will just bounce back?
“It’s a big piece of the puzzle. The special assessment is only like $8K per unit. What’s going to hurt the building values more is when rental prices go down because investors will get a lower return. Once their return goes down enough, they’ll figure it’s better to sell and invest their money elsewhere. Yes, once the pool reopens, rental prices should bounce back to where they should be.”
From the Air Jade at Brickell Bay Looks Better Than Ever
Jade at Brickell Bay is back and looking better than ever! For almost four years, a dark cloud hung over the luxury tower as an exterior work project to correct construction issues concerned and kept away would-be buyers. Scaffolding and rope hung down the sides of the building and, at one point, residents were unable to use their balconies on weekdays and the pool deck during certain hours. A few months ago, almost four years later, the exterior work project was completed and Jade at Brickell Bay is once again regarded as a top luxury option for buyers and renters. Take a look at our drone video below to see Jade at Brickell Bay in all her glory.
Miami-Dade County is Suing Genting Over Huge Tax Breaks on Its Undeveloped Casino Land
Resorts World Miami
The situation with Resorts World Miami, a gigantic casino and resort proposed by Malaysian casino conglomerate Genting, has deteriorated from a glittering (although very controversial) development on Biscayne Bay in Downtown Miami, to a stagnant and mysterious project bogged down by legal obstacles and lawsuits. A suit that Genting filed against the county attempting to force through legalization of a casino is ongoing while the county has hit Genting with three separate suits arguing that the company has received unfair tax breaks and refunds, reports the Miami Herald.
The suits appear to correspond to the three years in which the county’s Value Adjustment Board granted the company substantial tax refunds (2012, 2013, and 2014) totaling about $2.5 million with $255,000 in interest. Unsurprisingly the county isn’t happy, but neither is Genting, which has counter-sued saying they believe the county inflated the assessed value to begin with. That assessed value, for 2012, was $132 million for the building and land that was the former bay front home of the Miami Herald and was to become Resorts World Miami. This was only slightly more than half of the $232 million the company paid for it. That same year, Genting was able to get that assessed value reduced from $132 million to a very impressively low $88 million. Meanwhile, without a casino, beyond a few empty promises Genting has shown little interest in building a resort of any kind on the site, and the land remains empty.
