Unafraid of Market Slowdown, Colombian Developer Proposes Naranza at Edgewater
Ay dios mio! The Miami real estate market is in the doldrums and yet, hey this is Miami, where out-of-towners come to live out, and build, their flights of fancy. Hey, we don’t judge. Introducing Naranza at Edgewater, a 137 unit, 20-floor condo tower being launched in August by Colombian developer Prodesa. The building is at a site on NE 31st Street, East of Biscayne Boulevard, and immediately behind the Related Group’s Paraiso megaproject, which means the copious bay views in the project’s renderings (above and below) won’t actually exist. Sorry Charlie.
It’s being designed by Arquitectonica, and comes with the standard crop of amenities, including gym, clubroom, spa, and pool on the 6th floor amenity deck, and a roof deck up on the 20th. Anywho, according to Fortune International Realty, which is handling the sales, pricing is the least expensive per square foot available in Edgewater. 1 bedroom units start somewhere in the $300,000s. However, those 1-bedrooms are a rather smallish 650 square feet. Units range from there to larger corner two-bedroom units, with dens, in the high $500k. So, is it a bargain? You decide.
Flying Over Richard Meier’s Surf Club Four Seasons in a Drone
The combo historic and contemporary The Surf Club Four Seasons is nearing completion in the heart of Surfside since its topping-off over a year ago. As you can see in our latest drone video, the new condominium and hotel towers, which were designed by Kobi Karp Architecture & Interior Design in collaboration with starchitect Richard Meier, have been entirely glazed, while significant exterior and landscaping work remains on the lower floors as well as the exterior of the historic, Russell Pancoast-designed private club structure at the heart of the project. Meanwhile, across A1A, the inland side of the project (the low-rise contemporary block) appears virtually complete. The whole thing should be done this winter.
The project will include an 80 room Four Seasons Hotel as well as two 12-story residential towers, which Real Deal reported in June were 80% sold out. Unit prices range from $3.4 million to $18 million, and top out at more than 7,000 square feet in size. Meanwhile, Fort Partners, the developer, is obviously happy with its starchitect. They’ve kept Meier on to design the two residential towers they have proposed to build over the Miami Beach Marina in South Beach.
An Aerial Look at All Aboard Florida/ Brightline Train Station Construction
Construction of the Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach Brightline Stations is on schedule for the beginning of passenger train service next month, according to an update last week at the Brightline construction blog. The stations are also coming along pretty nicely when seen from the air. While construction for both the Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach stations is coming along nicely, construction at MiamiCentral, the Miami terminal station and by far the largest of the three (the fourth station, connecting to Orlando International Airport, is coming in Phase II) is approaching the level of the elevated train tracks. Check out the video, below.
In Downtown Miami, construction on the massive 11-acre MiamiCentral is progressing. Installation of the Florida I Beams (FIB’s) continuing, things are moving smoothly at the MiamiCentral Brightline station. Once the FIB’s are installed, work will begin on the elevated train tracks. The tracks will be installed on a slab, which will be cast on top of the FIB’s. In addition, the process of excavating for all of the rail infrastructure foundations is now complete and about 90 percent of the columns have been cast.
Just on the other side of the Miami-Dade County Overtown Transit Village, 3 MiamiCentral is also rising. In just a couple of months, the building has reached its tenth floor! Shoring for the fourth level parking garage has been completed and the installation of glass panels on the third level, below the office tower, is underway. Going forward, construction crews at 3 MiamiCentral will continue with rough plumbing, electrical work and HVAC ductwork installation, in addition to casting sections of the ninth and tenth floors.
Have You Seen This Design District Sculpture of Kate Moss Doing The Splits?
Photo via Miami Design District.
What would Edina Monsoon think of this? Supermodel Kate Moss has become a universal symbol of fashion and the fashion world. “Moss as an abstraction, an idealized figure who is more of a cultural hallucination than an actual person of flesh and blood,” says Opera Gallery Director Dan Benchetrit, whose gallery loaned this sculpture of Moss contorted in an exaggerated, and probably impossible yoga pose to the Miami Design District.
The piece is called Myth Fortuna and was created by British artist Marc Quinn, who Benchatrit says “chose Moss because she’s an icon of our age.” To that point, the surrealness of the sculpture could symbolize the transformation of the Design District neighborhood, and even Miami as a whole. It’s on display in the Paseo Ponti, looking into the Palm Court, between Loro Piana and Hermès.
As The Miami Market ‘Adjusts,’ Downtown Condos Nosedive & Rents Hold Steady
Photo by Bill Dickinson, via Flickr.
After five straight years of property value gains, Downtown Miami condominium resale prices are down 4% so far this year. On the rental side, a just-as-impressive streak of lease inflation in the urban core that began back in 2012 has finally broken. Rents are staying flat these days, and showing some downward pressure, due to piles new apartment inventory churning away in the pipeline and just now coming to market. Both of these market shifts were reported in the mid-year report from the Miami Downtown Development Authority, released this week, and the implications could be big. The greater Downtown area has for years been the center of Miami’s rapid urbanization, seeing huge amounts of growth. It fueled big gains. Well, the gains have finally gone, and Downtown’s performance is a lead indicator for the rest of Miami. The boom has bellowed out.
Euclid Avenue Plaza Extension of Lincoln Road Pedestrian Mall Opens to the Public
Photos by Sean McCaughan.
In the heart of South Beach. the new Euclid Avenue pedestrian plaza, beginning where Euclid terminates at Lincoln Road and extending almost a city block south, is done. The Euclid plaza, which we had just included in our Lincoln Road construction roundup last week, is now effectively an extension of Lincoln Road’s famed pedestrian promenade.
Technically, however, this is also Lincoln’s first completely new pedestrian mall expansion ever, since the road was initially closed to cars in 1960 by architect Morris Lapidus. (the 1100 block, which was also recently totally redesigned to remove traffic lanes that had crept back in, was not an expansion but a reclamation)
Miami Beach city bigwigs first decided to expand the mall at Euclid in 2014, when the city commission agreed on a public-private partnership deal with an adjacent developer, as the Herald reported at the time. With work beginning, the contracting job was awarded to Edge Construction, which from then on beautifully documented the project’s progress on their Facebook page.
This is a Skyscraper Robot Mashup of Miami’s Most Iconic Art Deco Architecture
Miami Robot. By artist Joel Kuntz
Contemporary artist Joel Kuntz’s work often explores ideas about urbanism, architectural style, and iconography. He addressed all of those themes in his Globobot Series, of large graphic prints and 3D figures, created by mashing together simple line drawings and cutouts of the most recognizable buildings from major cities around the world, transformers style.The results are person-shaped miniature towers, or robots, that somehow still look remarkably like the cities they’re based on.
New York’s Robot is a futuristic gotham topped by One World Trade Center’s spire. Paris is a gnarly gargoyle combining Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Paris Pantheon, etc. with an ancient hump (The hump looks like the pantheon, a temple-like Dome commission by Napoleon as his tomb), all wrapped in a daringly translucent little cocktail dress. Of course this ‘outfit’ is really just the more modern great glass pyramid of the Louvre.
And then there’s Miami. Here it is in neon rainbows. The Miami robot is mostly but not entirely a big pile of art deco stuff scattered around South Beach. Kuntz has squeezed in one or two post-modern and contemporary works too. See you if you can recognize which ones. Check out the rest of Kuntz’s robot-city-mashups over at his website, here.
Behold, the Miami Dolphin’s Big New Stadium Gets Built in One Epic Time-lapse Video
Photo via Miami Dolphins
The massive reconstruction and renovation of the Miami Dolphins’ Stadium, formerly known as Sun Life Stadium, Pro Player Stadium, and Jo Robbie Stadium, and now officially just Miami Stadium, is at the end of the 4th quarter, with seconds left on the clock. Going into overtime is not an option. Set on a stadium completion date of September 1st, in time for the first game of the season, the high-performance, genetically-modified playing turf went down on the field two days ago, at breakneck speed, as one of the finishing touches, reported the Miami Herald. Called Platinum TE Paspalum, it’s durable, shade tolerant, and soft enough that players might even “enjoy” cutting, landing, and being tackled on. It’s the future of lawns.
The entire stadium construction has been a highly choreographed, almost-theatrical spectacular, however, long before grass installation became sexy. Luckily, somebody time-lapsed the whole thing into about two minutes of pure, Gatorade-hydrated speed. The final product, created by a YouTuber known only as Ian693, is a mind-racing, wicked rush. Check it out here:
Abae, a Boutique Apartment-Hotel Coming to West Avenue, is Almost Finished
Photos by Sean McCaughan
Construction at the Abae Hotel South Beach, a new boutique apartment-hotel at 1215 West Avenue, is wrapping up just in time for its planned summer 2016 opening, as posted on its teaser website. Its the latest in a wave of new hotels that have opened within the last couple years along the West Avenue and nearby Bay Road, bringing a bit more activity to what has always been one of the quieter, more residential, quarters of South Beach.
The Abae follows hotels like the Gaythering Hotel, the Marriott Residence Inn, and even the slightly older Mondrian, the last of which is barely a few blocks away. Don’t expect too much action though. The Abae is the third hotel/residential project to come out of local developer/hotelier Eskape Collection, and already has the secluded, sanctuary-vibe of its two siblings, 1818 Meridian Avenue, a boutique hotel, and 6080 Collins Avenue, a condo hotel, both also on Miami Beach.
