Paraiso Construction is Going Absolutely Full Throttle

Looking at ONEParaiso. Photos by Christian Tupper, Related Group Sales Manager.

Now that they moved that sales center out of the way and the Paraiso Beach Club is underway, construction at the Related Group’s Paraiso community in Edgewater is going like gangbusters, with work ongoing at every element of the project except for  the public park. That’s were the sales center is located. Christian Tupper, a sales manager for Related, updated us on the construction progress of each element of Paraiso as well as the remaining availability.

PARAISO BAY (sold out): construction currently on the 53rd floor.

ONE PARAISO (2 Penthouse units available): construction currently on the 10th floor.

Paraiso BAYVIEWS (2 Bedrooms from $580K and Penthouses avaialable): construction currently on the 10th floor.

BAY HOMES (Liner units below the Paraiso Bay and Gran Paraiso amenity deck. 5 units available): construction currently on the 4th floor.

GRAN PARAISO (1,2,3,4 Bedroom & Penthouses Available): construction currently on the 4th floor.

Here Comes The Money: Miami Gets Its First Ship From the New Panama Canal

Say hello (and probably goodbye by now, it’s been a few days) to the MOL MAJESTY, the first neopanamax ship to dock at the Port of Miami after coming through the newly expanded Panama Canal. July 9th was the day the gigantic girl galumphed into the port and hauled herself over to its new gantry cranes, and Miami saw the beginning what all that tunnel digging, dredging, and etc. was all about. The ships are getting much bigger, says the Miami Herald:

“The 991-foot MOL Majesty, which has a 6,724 TEU (the equivalent of a standard 20-foot container) capacity, arrived in PortMiami just before dawn and already was offloading cargo by the time 11 a.m. festivities began at the port. The event ended with a BBQ under an old cargo crane. The original canal can only handle 5,000-TEU ships, while the new locks can accommodate ships carrying up to 14,000 TEUs.”

Checking in on Construction at the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami

Photos by Sean Mccaughan.

As Miami’s artsy types were carousing and cocktailing (Vodka open bar. It does the job) at the summer exhibition opening of the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami in the Design District’s Moore Building this Friday night, construction had stopped for the day at the ICA’s future home one block to the west and another block north. Risking showing up to the party with a dusty pair of loafers, I headed over to the construction site first to see its progress.

The three floor museum, built in concrete, has reached its full height, with high ceilings, and a lobby area that will look out onto the rear sculpture garden. Out front, the street-facing facade of the main block is windowless above the first floor, and all windows on the garden side. Just like the De La Cruz Collection building next door, the ICA galleries are exposed to the north, following a very ancient practice in the art world. Northern light (at least in the northern hemisphere) is less glaring and more diffused than southern.

Boulevard 57 Cancels Condo Sales, Keeps Retail, Might Swing a Trader Joe’s

Well, there goes one of the good ones. The Miami real estate boom of 2011-ish to 2016 must definitely really be over now that it’s started taking with it class acts such as Boulevard 57, a well-designed, contextual, and high quality building that was planned on Biscayne Boulevard and 57th Street. According to Hector Torres, chief operating officer of Unitas Development Group, who talked to The Real Deal, residential unit sales have been called off. Not according the Torres, however, who when asked by TRD said only that everything’s for sale at the right price, the entire site is being marketed for sale at $26 million. Real Deal heard that from “sources,” which probably just means a sales agent who is pissed they don’t have anything to sell there anymore.

On the positive side, the large site in the Upper Eastside might not have to sit fallow for years again, with deteriorating relics of a canceled condo project, because the ground-level retail is still on. After Kubik, planned for that spot during the last market boom, was shelved, a crane suspending a lit up (and eventually burned out) cube sat forlorn there for years. It probably got taken out of its misery by a hurricane or something. Thanks Wilma.

Torres said the retail portion of the project is moving forward and might even get ten or twenty thousand square feet larger. Lyle Chariff, who is marketing the retail, totally name dropped Trader Joe’s as a potential, or at least hoped for tenant, although the grammar is technically a bit vague on whether they are actually talking to them. They’ve had “interest from Trader Joe’s and Publix-type tenants” Chariff said. A courteous comma would have really cleared things up here, people.

The years of drama at this site (don’t even get us started on all the shit that went down when they pulled the plug on Kubik), just makes you wish some shortsighted bonehead had never demolished the beautiful old Northeast Miami Women’s Club’s Mediterranean Revival clubhouse to make it all happen. Read this excerpt about it from a Soyka Restaurant press packet:

Fun Fact: Garden Room is also meeting spot for the Northeast Miami Woman’s Club. It features an historic awning initially used by the organization in its hay day. Soyka purchased its main headquarters in the late 1990’s but insisted the group still host its meetings in the Garden Room, which they do on the third Thursday of every month between September and June.

1212 Lincoln Mixed-Use Project Gets Approved at Galbut’s Prized Lincoln-Alton Property

Developer Russell Galbut, the developer and ‘big man in charge’ at his development firm Crescent Heights, probably controls more Alton Road frontage than any single other individual, and he’s working on a series of infill developments that eventually may change the face of the street entirely. And that’s probably a good thing, because Alton from the Dade Canal south is really quite blah. You can already see construction bringing changes closer to 5th Street, Galbut also has a new Whole Foods Market in the works up on 19th and Alton, and now a redesigned and enlarged complex absorbing an entire block SW of the intersection with Lincoln (the previous design had been more angular). The project, which is being designed by two firms doing separate sections, Perkins+Will and Avroko, was just approved by the Miami Beach Design Review Board. This is primo, primo property, so Galbut is going all the way. The five story project includes a 447-space parking garage, a large food court functioning as a “common space” overlooking Alton Road,  a 100 guest room luxury hotel, and retail.

And yes, 1212 Lincoln is obviously a riff on 1111 Lincoln, the famous parking garage catercorner to it across the intersection.

Real Deal goes more in depth.

Public Meetings Will Shape the Future of Miami Beach’s Convention Center Hotel and 6th Street Corridor

Two intriguing public meetings are coming up in Miami Beach for citizens, neighbors, NIMBYs, YIMBYs, activists, and amateur (or not so amateur) architects and urban planners. On Monday, Miami Beach City Government is holding a public forum in the city hall commission chamber requesting residents’ input on the planned Convention Center Hotel. An earlier version of the hotel, planned for a location adjacent to the new convention center, was defeated in a voter referendum, so it’s back to the drawing board, and this time with hopefully better results.

On July 21, a community meeting will look at ways to improve the semi-desolate, messy, and well, sometimes downright dumpy 6th Street, in South Beach. Just north of the main thoroughfare of 5th Street, 6th is a transition between slightly higher density commercial buildings to the low-scale, leafy, garden apartment blocks of the Flamingo Park neighborhood. It’s being organized by city activist Michael DeFillipi, at Plant Theory.

Related Just Unveiled SLS Brickell’s Dramatically Diagonal Balcony Lights

Photo by Marcos Viñas, courtesy Instagram @anapaulacg.

The Related Group’s SLS Brickell condominium tower in the heart of Brickell is fast approaching completion, with closings comin’ up soon. How soon? According to Carlos Rosso, Related’s Luxury Condo Division President, they’re planning on September 1st. In anticipation, the tower was set ablaze last night with a dramatic outdoor lighting scheme of dominated by diagonal rows of twinkling blue dots affixed to small promontories poking out of the building’s balconies, then wrapping around the building at the corners. The effect is really very cool, although last night was a test. How did the test turn out? Well, it looks pretty great,. but as you can see a few big chunks of balcony lights stayed in the dark. Looks like someone might have to do some more testing, Christmas light style.

Construction is Transforming the ‘Entrance’ to Miami Beach, Around a Hostile Intersection in Need of Change Too

Photos by Sean McCaughan.

Multiple construction projects just north of the intersection of 5th Street and Alton Road are transforming the face of the street in that area, from a series underutilized and neglected lots near the prime entrance to Miami Beach to an attractively urban cityscape. The obtuse intersection however, notable for its flyover from the MacArthur Causeway and hostility to pedestrians, has yet to follow with a makeover. I almost died taking the photo above.

On the east side of Alton, at 6th Street, the very attractively designed Urban Box Self Storage (how often is self storage sexy, really?) is well under construction. North of it, developers Crescent Heights (which is dominating new developing all along Alton with a series of quite fetchingly designed buildings) are building a new healthcare center for Baptist Hospital. Construction has already broken ground on that. Last, and by far the biggest, Crescent Heights is clearing and gutting two entire blocks it owns between 5th and 7th on the west side of Alton while lobbying the city for permission to construct a 300-foot tower on the land in exchange for building a new mass transit hub in the base. Until then, a 7-11 still sits splat in the middle of his land even though the convenience store’s old parking lot is half buried under the mountain of an elevated street.

In five years, and again in ten, the main entrance to Miami Beach is destined to look very different than today.

Tri-Rail Launches Miami Link Website, Announces Service “As Early As” December Next Year

With funds in place, its grand Downtown Miami station under construction courtesy All Aboard Florida, and expectations of daily train service beginning “as early as” December of 2017, Trii-Rail has launched a website for its latest and greatest expansion into Downtown. The site includes data on the project as well as a video simulation recorded on Google Earth of the route into the urban core. Check out the video below. As it shows, this is a very significant step toward rail expansion in Miami. It’s also a reminder of just how much underdeveloped land there is in what really is the heart of the city. If we really want things to change, why aren’t we building more there?

Bayfront Lot, With Plans to Rebuild Historic Mansion, Faces “Drastic Price Drop” to $4.95M

A 1920s Mediterranean Revival pile called the ‘Prescott Mansion’ used to sit on this Biscayne Bay-fronting lot in the Bayside Historic District in Miami, at 7101 NE 10th Ave. Unfortunately, it doesn’t anymore. The lot, now listed for sale after a “drastic price drop” according to agent Dora Puig to $4.95 million (a $1.5M reduction), comes with plans to rebuild the house and add a contemporary new wing with some crazy luxe amenities designed by architect Ralph Choeff. The plans for the new house include a 7,000 square foot underground garage, a huge pool, 10 bedrooms, 3 kitchens, and a private sandy beach.