Inside Brickell City Centre’s First Completed Condo Tower, Reach

Brickell City Centre Reach was recently completed and opened to residents, and today Miami Condo Investments got a lookie-loo inside. The building, the first of two condo towers in Phase I of Brickell City Centre, is done up to the nines, with everything super-perfect and tchochkies on every surface. Meanwhile, almost all units have sold in Reach, while there is much more availability in the not-yet-completed Rise, and prices for both are averaging about $650 per square foot. Check out the photo tour below.

SkyRise Miami Could Get ‘Giant Observation Wheel’ and ‘Giant Chair Drop’ Additions

Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel, 1913.

When and if SkyRise Miami eventually gets built, the observation tower and vertical amusement park above Biscayne Bay in Downtown Miami might have two new additions: a ‘giant observation wheel’ and ‘giant chair drop’ according to modified plans submitted to the City of Miami Planning Department for approval. The Next Miami acquired a copy of those plans and renderings, unrealistically showing sort of a pill-shaped oval of little pods discretely orbiting around the back of the tower. Ridiculous rendering alert! It could actually be pretty awesome, but come on bro, the engineering alone will make the ‘wheel’ a lot more noticeable than that ridiculous little fantasy chain of pearls. The finished product will probably look more like a bicycle wheel nailed to a stool (how Duchampian!) than that rendering. Hey, at least it won’t be so phallic anymore.

Is There a Way to Save Midtown’s Central Green Space?

Photo by Sean McCaughan.

The great big empty lawn in the center of Midtown Miami has sat there for years as Midtown gradually gets built up around it. Originally meant to be the location of an entertainment center and mall when Midtown was first developed from the old Buena Vista Rail Yards, the huge lawn has for years been literally nothing but a luscious green carpet of grass, with the potential to make a fantastic public space, parkland, gardens, Central Park, etc. for the entire neighborhood. Back in 2012, I wondered what was up, and the answer was nothing. The assumption today in 2016 is that it still will be developed, by its owners or whoever they sell it to, someday. But is there an alternative? I posed the question to some friends on Facebook and one, urban planner Donald Shockey, offered an intriguing potential solution:

The City could aggressively offer the owners expanded transferable development rights to make this a permanent park and still profit from their investment. This is very feasible and would provide a desperately needed central park to serve Midtown, Wynwood, and Edgewater. This would be an enormously transformative project for Miami.

Adorable South-of-Fifth Condo Does a Lot With 588 Square Feet

“Manhattan meets Miami” is how the broker describes this gorgeous little condo in a postwar (built 1969, summer of love) condo building South-of-Fifth. Okay, yes, it’s kind of Manhattan-ish in its petite size and the fact it’s not covered in palm tree prints, but it’s also just very tastefully done, and resourcefully done too. The NE facing unit at 360 Meridian Avenue, with expansive views just over the tree line, is listed for $330,000. In 588 square feet, this apartment is very nicely kitted out, with a separate sleeping area partitioned by concrete block, a kitchen hidden behind an extensive bookcase, a large dining room table, and a couch near the balcony.

Coconut Grove’s Ace Theater Placed on National Register of Historic Places

Photo via Google Street View.

The Ace Theater in the West Grove, which was built in the 1930s and one of the few movie theaters to cater to Miami’s black community in the intervening decades of segregation (Real Deal says it was the “only” one in the ’50s, which doesn’t sound quite right. For one thing, the Olympia had a black section.) has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places following a campaign by its owners, longtime Coconut Grove residents The Wallace Family. Following the designation, the Wallaces plan to preserve and restore the theater as a multi-use entertainment venue, taking advantage of tax credits and transferable development rights to make the project more appealing to investors. Although a similar project championed by many Grove-ites, the restoration of the Coconut Grove Playhouse, has been dormant for years, frustrating some people who see the similarities between the two, the restoration of the Ace could be absolutely fantastic for the West Grove, Miami’s oldest black neighborhood, and for the preservation of Miami’s black heritage as a whole.

Big New Mixed-Use Project Coming to Old Channel 10 Studios Site on Biscayne Boulevard, Replacing Art School

Quadro

A 13-story building called Quadro with 198 rental apartment units and 28,000 square feet of retail space is being developed by Alta Development in the Miami Design District at 3900 Biscayne Boulevard, the former site of the Channel 10 Studios, and the current location the Miami  Arts Charter School which is relocating to Wynwood.  Naturally, it’s called Quadro because the building stretches from 39th to 40th Streets, although 40th Street doesn’t actually intersect with Biscayne Boulevard here (the next intersection isn’t until 50th Terrace), so that’s something…

From renderings revealed on The Next Miami, the design itself looks attractive and logical, if not particularly unique in any way. It does, however, urbanize what until now has been a rather atypical suburban stretch of Biscayne Boulevard, and it does it well. Alta partnered with the Related Group on the neighboring Baltus House, so they’re not unfamiliar with the area. Alta hired Revuelta as the design architect and Behar Font as the architect of record, although they bought the land from Nancy Karp, wife of architect Kobi Karp, a year ago for $18.4 million. Whatever anyone says about those Karps and the quality of their architecture (and I’ve said a lot), you’ve got to admit they’re pretty damn talented real estate investors.

Why Are So Many New Wynwood Buildings So Big & So Blah?

Wynwood 25

The Wynwood Design Review Committee unanimously approved designs for three buildings taller than 80 feet on Wednesday despite the committee’s own reservations that the buildings were stupendously blah and would be eyesores in such a colorful neighborhood. Some of their comments, as relayed by Real Deal, were quite juicy: “No one is going to want to take a selfie in front of that” committee member Zak Stern of Zak the Baker said of Wynwood 222, the project which got the most criticism. And “It’s just standing there, massive, big, and there nothing to look at,” said committee member Victor Sanchez. of the building’s gray design. Nevertheless they approved it with requirements that basically amounted to “add a little color.” The other two buildings were Wynwood 25 and Wynwood 26, also approved.

Wynwood 222 was designed by Raymond Fort, of Arquitectonica. He defended his project by saying his intent was to “tone it back” and present an “inverted version” of Wynwood. If you splash the building with bright graffiti colors you are going to end up with something that’s not desirable.” The thing is, being the son of Arquitectonica’s two principals and an heir apparent to the firm, if anybody has Miami architecture in his blood it’s him. If anybody ‘gets it’ it should be him. So, either Ray is totally off his rocker and the throne is going into dangerous hands or he is making a point with his big gray box that the rest of us just don’t realize. Consider another building he designed  for the firm that really does push the envelope for architecture in Miami in an exciting direction, and is also gray: the Fairholme Capital Building on Biscayne Boulevard.

In the end though, these larger buildings are a new thing for Wynwood, to to a recent rezoning that made them possible. As Stern told Fort, it wasn’t anything personal against the project (although come on, this is one of the most colorful neighborhoods in the world and that shtick is gray), it’s just “you are our guinea pig.”

Is An Ultra Expensive Condo Project Coming to Terminal Island?

Previous project designed for the site, by Lord Norman Foster.

Back in 2014, developer Harvey Hernandez pitched a public-private partnership to the City of Miami Beach to build a luxury condo tower on Terminal Island that would be designed by Lord Norman Foster. The idea was rather fabulous of course – a ship-like form perched in the middle of Biscayne Bay, right next to the cruise ships – and even though Miami is the place where fabulous things come true, it didn’t.

But something like it might. According to The Next Miami, the Related Group has now likely gained control of a 3.71-acre piece of land on the property through a series of deals made last month. Meanwhile, in a Bloomberg article announcing condo king Jorge Perez’s desired departure from Related in a few years, and his plan to hand the reins over to his sons, also mentions that son Jon Paul Perez “recently brought in a deal in the Miami Beach area that he said would be the site of the company’s priciest-ever condo project on a per-square-foot basis, with units costing more than $2,500 a square foot.” Could this be that? If so, it would be right up there with his father’s most spectacular projects.

Moishe Mana Plans Residential Tower Without Parking Near MiamiCentral Station

Miami is getting so urban! Look at us building yet another residential tower in Downtown Miami without any parking, and it’s not that big of a deal. When Centro was announced, everyone was all “Dude, where’s my car going to go” (get it, haha!) but it was still built and everything’s ok.

Developer Moishe Mana has submitted plans for a 49 story ‘luxury’ residential tower without parking at 200 North Miami Avenue, and like they so often do in other cities like New York but we almost never do in Miami when it comes to large condo towers, he’s not actually giving the building a name (like Jade, Wind, Atlantis, Paraiso, Icon, etc.) and just calling it 200 North Miami Avenue. Yes, plenty of Miami condo towers are riffs or abbreviations of their address (50 Biscayne, 1000 Museum, etc.) but this just the full street address. Weird, sort of.

According to The Next Miami, the building designed by Zyscovich maxes out on the allowable unit count on the site, at 328. It will be tall, with no podium but instead a cutout for an outdoor pool, topping out at 599 feet. Finally, the location, though not exactly lovely at the moment, will be fabulous in less than ten years, less than a block away from MiamiCentral, surrounded by courthouses and government buildings, two blocks away from Miami-Dade College’s Wolfson Campus, two blocks away from the heart of Downtown, and two blocks away from Miami Worldcenter.

Forget Dispensers, Miami Beach Needs Seagulls That Poop Sunscreen

Forget those complementary sunscreen dispensers, Miami Beach needs these robotic seagulls that poop sunscreen from a hilariously bad add campaign called “Care from the air”. The campaign was entered into the Cannes-for-advertising (it’s in Cannes), the Titanium Grand Prix, by sunscreen company Nivea, and mocked by the jury committee before it lost. In Adweek, Sir John Hagerty, an advertising legend and Jury member, said: “”You should see it,” he said. “It’s the most stupid thing I think I’ve seen in my whole life. I actually thought the Monty Python team had gotten together and    entered it into [Cannes], to see if we would vote for it.”