Another co-living project is in the pipeline for Wynwood.
The project between 33-51 NW 28th St. will include 200 fully-furnished units, according to a press release. The 8-story project will have 3,600 square feet of ground-floor retail space. Amenities include a gym and rooftop pool. The Related Group will develop the project with real estate investor W5 Group. Related and W5 hired the Grove-based architectural firm Arquitectonica to design the building.
It will be another co-living building in Wynwood, behind the Property Markets Group and Greybrook Realty Partners project.
“As a Miami resident myself, I have witnessed Wynwood’s ascent with some interest,” said Ralph Winter, principal of W5 Group in the release. “However, as neighborhoods become more desirable, young people are often priced out. Co-living is an exciting proposition that offers tremendous value, enabling them to experience modern living in highly attractive units — all while meeting like-minded individuals and forming rewarding new bonds in coveted metropolitan areas.”
Co-living, or apartments building with micro units and shared amenities, including communal kitchens, is one way developers aim to resolve Miami’s growing affordability issue.
The investment is part of the effort to expand the Berlin-based Quarters co-living and property management brand on behalf of the W5 Group and the Medici Living Group. The teams are investing $300 million of equity to expand the brand in select U.S. cities from Europe. There are 14 cities across the globe, including Miami, that are expected to receive a Quarters-branded project or already have one, including Washington, D.C., New York, Chicago, the Hague, Stuttgart, Munich, Rotterdam, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Philadelphia and Düsseldorf.
The W5 Group has offices in Switzerland, New York and Miami. It established its foothold in Miami Beach in 2009.
The neighborhood continues to attract developers. A new hotel by the San Francisco-based Sonder team and an office building are also planned for Wynwood.
Related Group recently completed two projects in Wynwood and has more in the works, Vice President Jon Paul Perez told Bisnow this week. In Allapattah, it recently opened a gallery and is on the lookout for other opportunities.
“It’s gotten to that point where the buying and trading of land without developing … that ship has sailed,” Perez said. “If you’re buying land there now, you’re assuming you’re going to have to develop.”
Sterling Bay Director of Leasing Michael Lirtzman had a similar assessment. The Chicago development giant closed on a site for $18.9M in December 2018, at 545 Northwest 26th St., where it is building a 10-story, 300K SF office building called 525wyn.
“We got in at a pretty good number,” Lirtzman said. “The pricing was a little more restrained. Now it’s starting to push.”
Sophisticated national developers have “brought some discipline to the pricing,” he said, but he predicted values would stay high as the neighborhood hits maturity.
“Wynwood is in the mode of building now,” said Avison Young principal John Crotty, with the days of flipping mostly gone and big residential developers going vertical.
Allapattah, however, still has pockets of opportunity, he said. “Other than by the [Miami] River and by [Jackson Memorial] Hospital, there’s not much development.”
Related Group and partner East End Capital completed Wynwood 25 in July. Its 289 apartments are now 85% leased at $3.10 per SF, Perez said, and its 35K SF of retail is 45% leased. Another project, the Bradley, which Related developed as apartments, was instead leased entirely to Domio to be operated as short-term rentals.
Perez said that Related benefited by being the first mover, willing to take a risk.
“The bet that we were making was that people wanted to live in Wynwood, right?” he said. “I could never have told you, ‘Hey, I’m going to sign a lease for all the apartments to one operator,’ because I think at that time these types of companies did not exist.”
When Domio came around, “we were the only option for someone that wanted one of those companies to be able to be in the neighborhood,” he added. Domio reportedly fought off competition from rival short-term rental operators to sign the building.
The largest development deal in the area last year was a 1.6-acre site at the corner of Northwest 25th Street and Second Avenue, which buyer Property Markets Group and Greybrook Realty Partners paid $46M to acquire and redevelop from its existing use as a gallery into a six-story resident complex with 222 units, Crotty said.
Crotty said PMG spun out the bottom-floor retail to Tricera Capital, which should be able to garner rents around $80 per SF.
“That’s Main and Main,” said Crotty, a former NBA player who also serves as the Miami Heat’s TV analyst. “That’s top-of-the-market pricing.”
Blocks off the main drag, Wynwood rents are about $50 per SF, he said.
Office leasing at the Wynwood Annex has gone a little slowly, Perez said, but Live Nation leased a floor and he said he is in talks with potential tenants that are similar in size and credit to the events company.
“So definitely by the end of 2022, our buildings should be close, if not 100% occupied,” Perez said.
Lirtzman compared Wynwood to the Fulton Market area of Chicago, which was “where young people went to hang out. There was no office, but a vibrancy in the neighborhood.”
Sterling Bay decided to build office projects there with large floor plates and top-line amenities geared for creative tenants. It is now building its seventh Fulton Market building in a six- or seven-block radius.
Sterling Bay’s Wynwood project, which recently topped off, will include a fitness center, an indoor/outdoor bar and 440 parking spaces. Its first tenant is architecture giant Gensler, and Lirtzman said a letter of intent has been signed for a consulting firm to take 8K SF.
Goldman Properties opened the 30K SF Wynwood Garage in 2018, and a boutique office building, the eight-story, 86K SF Cube Wynwd, opened last year. Another big project, The Gateway at Wynwood, a 460K SF Class-A office building, broke ground last week.
The same forces that shaped Wynwood have affected the working-class neighborhood of Allapattah, just to the west. Whereas Wynwood had largely been made up of industrial warehouses, Allapattah now buzzes with working-class businesses. But real estate pros have been hyping it as the next hot neighborhood.
Developer Robert Wennett has proposed a mixed-use development by Danish “starchitect” Bjarke Ingels. Neology Life Development Group head Lissette Calderon in October broke ground on No. 17 Residences Allapattah, a 14-story, 192-unit apartment at 1569 Northwest 17th Ave.
“If you go have lunch on a Wednesday, it’s cops, it’s firemen, there’s people that are working nurses, doctors,” Perez said. “Allapattah probably started selling at $20 a foot, and now you have property trading at 130 bucks a foot.
“We’re not in that game of finding land and hoping for the value to rise and then flipping. So we say, ‘OK, at this price, does it make sense where I could build apartments, office, whatever it may be, at this land basis?'” he continued. “We’re looking for sites that are large enough that we can do substantial projects — 300 or so apartments there — and we haven’t found one yet that we are moving forward on.”
Calderon said in an email that construction on No. 17 Residences Allapattah has reached the fifth floor and is expected to be completed in spring 2021. She highlighted its amenities, including smart technology for package receiving, a digital concierge, a gym with virtual fitness and a “bark park” where dogs can play.
She said Neology Life is planning to break ground on another mixed-use project near No. 17, with 323 units, ground-floor retail and office space. It would begin construction after No. 17 opens in late spring 2021.
Crotty said that besides the aforementioned projects, plus a few others in the pipeline — the 555 River House proposed by Avra Jain and a yet-to-be-developed parcel he sold to billionaire developer Moishe Mana for $8.5M — Allapattah “has yet to fill in and grow,” he said.
Florida’s Department of Transportation is exploring the possibility of building a new highway exit off Interstate 95 at Northwest 29th Street.
The last time the Super Bowl came to Miami, the football stadium on the edge of the Everglades and just off the turnpike was surrounded by asphalt and dirt parking lots.
Miami-Dade County had 20% fewer apartments and 23% fewer available hotel rooms during the championship game in 2010, when Airbnb and ride-hailing companies such as Uber were in their infancy. Brightline, the commuter train service renamed Virgin Trains USA that connects Miami with West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale, didn’t exist. All those factors are expected to play major roles this weekend as Miami hosts the Super Bowl for a record 11th time, attracting more than 200,000 people to a region with a skyline that has changed dramatically.
“If you were here 10 years ago and came back, you’ll find that this city is completely different,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez said.
North of downtown, once-distressed neighborhoods such as Allapattah and Little Haiti are attracting new development that appeals to millennials who want to live close to where they work. One of the trendiest areas of Miami is Wynwood, a former industrial and garment district now drawing offices, retail and residential. Tour buses regularly pass through Wynwood, allowing visitors to snap selfies among the spray-painted graffiti that adorns many of the buildings in the rollicking arts district.
“Miami has become more of an urban place where people live and play now,” said Rodney Barreto, chairman of the Miami Super Bowl Host Committee. “It wasn’t that 10 years ago. Heck, at 6 or 7 o’clock at night you couldn’t find anybody downtown. Now at 11 o’clock at night, people are walking their dogs.”
In the past 10 years, close to 30,000 new apartments have been built across Miami-Dade County, helping make it the U.S. capital for rentals as a percentage of inventory, according to CoStar data. The market has added 11,000 more hotel rooms, not including thousands of new beds now available through home-sharing giant Airbnb. Scores of luxury condominium towers are sprouting up in downtown Miami, including one that has an amenity deck that can be transformed into a skyport for flying cars and another with a robot concierge service.
The 65,000-seat Hard Rock Stadium is now the new home of the Miami Open tennis tournament and has attracted soccer, concerts and other events. Last year, ground was broken on a $135 million Dolphins training facility next to the stadium. And gondolas were installed that will make their debut on Super Bowl Sunday, giving fans an aerial view of the pregame festivities.
“It’s definitely a different town, and we’re going to be really proud to show it off, for sure,” Barreto said.
The Feb. 2 game at Hard Rock Stadium between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers is expected to generate an estimated economic impact in excess of $400 million. Hotels in the Miami area are projected to break all-time highs for average daily rate and revenue per available room, two industry standard measurements, according to figures from STR, a travel industry data and analytics firm owned by CoStar Group, the parent company of CoStar News.
Making the Pitch
NFL owners voted in 2016 to award South Florida this year’s Super Bowl, a game that marks the league’s 100th season. They were sold after listening to a pitch from Miami Dolphins owner and Hudson Yards developer Stephen Ross about hundreds of millions of dollars he spent to renovate the aging Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, on the edge of the Everglades northwest of downtown Miami.
At the time, the Dolphins and Barreto said the region’s bid, which topped 550 pages, included a budget of cash and incentives valued at more than $40 million. Barreto now declines to discuss specifics of the bid, saying parts of it eventually will be made public.
Miami, the nation’s seventh-largest metropolitan area, is a preferred destination for the Super Bowl because of its size and the consistently warm weather, notwithstanding the Super Bowl in 2007, but even then fans found it strangely appropriate that halftime performer Prince sang his hit song “Purple Rain” in the rain.
Meanwhile, the matchups in Miami have been among the most memorable in league history.
In the second of five Super Bowls played at the Orange Bowl in Miami, New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath famously guaranteed victory over the Baltimore Colts in 1969, a huge upset that led to the merger of the NFL and the American Football League.
Twenty years later, in a new stadium privately funded by Dolphins founding owner Joe Robbie, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Joe Montana jokingly pointed out actor John Candy in the crowd to his teammates before leading them on a last-second drive to beat the Cincinnati Bengals.
A decade ago, the New Orleans Saints outlasted the now Indianapolis Colts with the help of a risky onside kick to open the second half, delivering the Big Easy’s first title, 4 1/2 years after the city was devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
But not long after the Saints beat the Colts in February 2010, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell delivered a stark message to Ross and other officials hoping to schedule another Super Bowl at Hard Rock.
“The commissioner was very adamant and very loud about we would not get another Super Bowl until we made renovations,” Barreto told CoStar News.
Stadium Improvement Process
Ross first sought public money to renovate the stadium that opened in 1987, though that effort hit a political wall. In 2014, he struck a deal with Miami-Dade to pay for the upgrades himself in exchange for bonus payments to the Dolphins for hosting the Super Bowl and other events.
The phased stadium improvements brought new seats, two new concourses, new suites, four high-definition video boards and a canopy that shades 92% of the fans. The cost: more than $550 million.
Gondolas will make their debut at Hard Rock Stadium at the Super Bowl Feb. 2 in Miami. (Paul Owers/CoStar News)
Ross’ total investment at Hard Rock Stadium now tops $700 million, noted Tom Garfinkel, president and CEO of the Dolphins and member of the Miami Super Bowl Host Committee.
“It’s a testament to Steve Ross’ commitment,” Garfinkel said in an interview. “The stadium has become a global entertainment destination.”
The NFL seems impressed.
Senior Director of Event Planning Eric Finkelstein, whose crew of 6,000 workers has been in South Florida since Jan. 2 preparing for the Super Bowl, said the new canopy allows the league to introduce surprises for fans during the championship game.
“To us, it feels like a brand new building because of how much has changed,” said Finkelstein, who is overseeing his 21st Super Bowl.
NFL owners typically vote to award the game to cities with warm weather or domed stadiums. Teams that agree to build stadiums, as the Los Angeles Rams are doing, have a good chance of eventually hosting the Super Bowl. Tampa, Florida, doesn’t have a new stadium, but NFL owners voted to move the Super Bowl there in February 2021 from Inglewood, California, because of construction delays at the Los Angeles Rams’ SoFi Stadium. It will be the fifth time Tampa has hosted the game. The big game heads to SoFi Stadium in the Los Angeles area in 2022.
Local civic and business leaders insist they aren’t taking for granted the impact of the game on South Florida, no matter how many times it has been played here.
“We have the attention and the focus of the world,” Miami Mayor Francis Suarez said.
Barreto has signed paperwork to allow South Florida to compete for the Super Bowl in any year from 2025 to 2030. He was watching on television Wednesday when Goodell, speaking at his state of the league press conference, praised local officials and indicated the game likely will return to Hard Rock Stadium.
“We’re ecstatic,” Barreto said. “I believe they like Miami. We’re experienced, and we know how to work with them.”
Come the fall, developer and entrepreneur Moishe Mana will break ground on his first project in Wynwood. And more will soon follow, he said.
Mana is ready to proceed with a three-story, 35,410-square-foot building at 2900 NW Fifth Ave. that will house the Puerto Rican Chamber of Commerce and some additional offices for Miami-Dade County, according to Berenblum Busch Architects.
The architectural firm will submit the final design and construction documents by late January for the building and expects to have permits in hand by August, said Gustavo Berenblum, the firm’s founding principal.
Construction is slated to begin in September. The chamber, currently at 3550 Biscayne Blvd., is expected to relocate to the new digs by November 2021.
The three-story building will include a ground floor café, retail and meeting spaces, and 6,800 square feet of ground-floor parking, according to Gustavo Berenblum, the firm’s founding principal. The second floor will host offices for the chamber and county. The third floor will have additional offices as well as a 6,800-square-foot terrace facing south toward 29th Street.
Originally designed as a four-story building, the project was downsized at the request of the developer and county to meet the construction budget of $8.4 million. The four-story design would have cost $11 million, Berenblum said.
As part of an agreement between Mana and Miami-Dade County, the county will pay about $2 million from a bond; Mana will pay the rest.
The development comes as the neighborhood’s office market expands. The prior year saw the largest amount of Class A and Class B office space development since 2009, and Wynwood is receiving much of that new square footage.
Mana owns 40 mostly contiguous acres in Wynwood. His plan for the neighborhood includes a trade center occupying 8.5 acres from west of Northwest Fifth Avenue to Interstate 95.
The Israeli-born developer is also focused on planning and designing the front lot of a 4.5-acre development with buildings scaling two-to-three stories between Northwest 23rd St. up to Northwest 22nd St. and Northwest 2nd Ave.
“It will add another dimension to Wynwood,” Mana said.
He expects to complete the design in about two months.
The Wynwood neighborhood was one of the first areas settled by Puerto Rican immigrants who moved to Miami in the 1950s.
“It’s important to have the chamber in Wynwood because we don’t want to lose this part of the community,” Mana said. “We want to keep the culture.”
Said Berenblum Busch Architects Principle Claudia Busch, “It’s an opportunity for the Puerto Rican community to have a place of its own. You already have many Puerto Rican institutions that are there contributing to the health of the local economy there.”
Mana’s company also plans to provide financial support for chamber events, he said. To date, it has given $60,000, according to the chamber.
“We plan to initiate an arts program to attract artists from Puerto Rico and local artists for cultural events,” said Luis De Rosa, the president of the Puerto Rican Chamber of Commerce. “We also plan to provide aid to small businesses.”
Mana started searching for a Wynwood location for the chamber in 2011, he said, and signed an agreement with the county in 2015. Previously, the group planned to build at Northwest Second Ave. and 21st Street but abandoned that location due to environmental issues with the property, Busch said.
Special Area Plans have enabled developers to build massive projects in the city of Miami like Brickell City Centre, River Landing Shops and Residences, Mana Wynwood, the Miami Produce Center (pictured above), and Magic City Innovation District.
SAPs have also antagonized neighborhood activists who fear that such massive developments destroy the character of low-rise neighborhoods and speed up the displacement of individuals and families who can’t afford the skyrocketing rents or property taxes.
Now, the Miami Planning, Zoning and Appeals Board is recommending that no other SAPs be approved.
By a vote of 6 to 3 on Wednesday, the board approved a resolution to repeal the Special Area Plan provision that enables property owners who assemble more than 9 acres of land to seek extensive zoning changes.
Such a repeal still needs to be approved, twice, by the Miami City Commission, which is embarking on its own review of the entire Miami 21 zoning code, including SAPs.
Planning board member Adam Gersten cast one of the dissenting votes, saying he feared that commissioners may simply ignore a recommendation to repeal, and advocated for a moratorium on SAPs instead. As part of that moratorium, the board could recommend reforms, including that the SAP causes no net loss of affordable housing in the surrounding area, Gersten suggested.
Chris Collins, another dissenting voter, agreed. “I think it would be more proactive and go a longer way if we specify what we want to change and how to change it,” Collins said.
But board member Alex Dominguez said that while the city tries to “workshop this thing to death,” more people are being displaced by legislation that encourages land speculation.
“If you do a moratorium… it’s like putting lipstick on a pig, and at the end of the day, it’s still a pig,” Dominguez said.
He also argued that many real estate developers “don’t even want to touch SAPs” because of the community opposition they tend to attract.
“It’s not a big deal to repeal SAPs from Miami 21,” Dominguez said, adding that “keeping it alive and tweaking it is affecting a hell of a lot more people negatively rather than positively.”
Neisen Kasdin, a land use attorney affiliated with Akerman, rose in defense of SAPS, arguing that the legislation has enabled “good” projects like the expansion of Ransom Everglades private school in Coconut Grove and the ongoing construction of an EmpathiCare Village for Alzheimer’s patients at Miami Jewish Health Systems in Buena Vista. SAP developers must also offer “community benefit agreements” in exchange for approval, Kasdin added.
“If you pass this legislation, you are not just throwing the baby out with the bath water, you are throwing out the baby,” Kasdin said.
But Marleine Bastien, executive director of Family Action Network Movement (FANM), said one of Kasdin’s clients, Magic City Innovation District, is an example of a “bad SAP” that has already indirectly led to the displacement of several residents and small businesses. That project, which was approved by the city commission last June, is being challenged in court by Warren Perry, a Little Haiti resident affiliated with FANM. One of the project’s initial investors, Robert Zangrillo, is also fighting charges from the U.S. Attorney’s Office related to the college admission fraud scandal, as well as charges from the Federal Trade Commission that he co-owned fraudulent websites.
Leonie Hermantin, a board member of Concerned Leaders of Little Haiti, said that although her organization supported the Magic City Innovation District, the group is also in favor of repealing the SAP provision.
“We know that the impact of multiple SAPs in our community will be detrimental,” Hermantin told the board. “I agree with Mr. Kasdin. There are good SAPs and there are bad SAPs. The problem is, unfortunately, that bad SAPs have been allowed to go through.”
The board has kept one controversial SAP in limbo: Eastside Ridge, a proposed 5.4 million-square-foot project that will be built less than a mile from the 8.2-million-square foot Magic City Innovation District and across the street from Miami Jewish Health. The planning board has continued the project five times, with members demanding improvements. In response, SPV Realty, Eastside Ridge’s developers, filed a lawsuit demanding that the board make a decision on the project — either recommending for or against it — so that it can be heard by the Miami City Commission.
Board member Anthony Parrish said Eastside Ridge helped make up his mind on whether or not to support repealing SAPs.
“One attorney of a major project said, ‘Just deny us. We just want to get to the commission,’” Parrish said. “That is what provided, at least for this member of the board, a need to repeal this.”
For those who thought the pop-up trend was coming to a close, guess again. Pop-up stores are proliferating in cities across the country, including Miami.
The most popular local pop-up hubs: the Design District, Lincoln Road and Wynwood.
That news comes from a December report Pop-up-a-Palooza! published by Cushman & Wakefield in December. The report studied digital brands that opened for the first time in a bricks-and-mortar space during Halloween, the busiest time of year for pop-ups. In 2019, about 2,500 temporary Halloween stores opened across the country — an 80% increase from 10 years ago, when 1,400 stores opened.
Miami was one of 37 cities listed as a stronghold of activities. New York, Las Vegas and Los Angeles were also on the list.
A set of interconnected buildings is designed to bring a mix of residential, retail and office uses to a block in Wynwood, along with major murals and other art treatments and a large courtyard.
With a current title of Dorsey, the major mixed-use project is proposed by developer Weck 29th LLC for land at 2562/268/286 NW 29th St. and 2801 NW Third Ave.
The City of Miami’s Urban Development Review Board voted unanimously to recommend approval.
The venture is being touted as “a true live, work, and play environment.”
Designed by architectural firm Arquitectonica, Dorsey is to rise to 12 stories and include a building at eight stories, surrounding a landscaped courtyard for pedestrian mobility and activity.
The entire development will amount to 604,110 square feet, be home to 306 residences, 35,858 square feet of commercial-retail uses, 58,760 square feet of offices, and have parking levels to hold about 521 vehicles.
The site plan shows projected open space amounting to 16,293 square feet.
The property currently consists of industrial structures and surface parking, according to a letter to the city from Iris Escarra, an attorney representing Weck 29th LLC.
The site includes two adjoining properties with different zoning classifications, along with a special Neighborhood Revitalization District, or NRD-1 overlay, and a land designation of general commercial.
Approximately 32,831 square feet or .75-acre is zoned T5-0, and 56,030 square feet or 1.29 acres is in the T6-8-0 zoned area.
Ms. Escarra said the property fronts Northwest 28th Street to the south and Northwest 29th Street to the north, comprising the property’s principal frontages. Northwest Third Avenue abuts the property to the west, and also serves as a principal frontage.
“The proposed project is an infill project adjacent to two highly traversed streets, NW 29th Street and NW 3rd Avenue,” she wrote. “The Property is located within the Wynwood neighborhood, which has seen a rapid growth over the last few years as it transforms from an industrial neighborhood to an arts and culture destination. The Project seeks to redevelop the industrial structures and provide Residential, Office, and Commercial Uses throughout the Property.”
Discussing details of the project with the review board at its December meeting was attorney Brian A. Dombrowski, also representing the developer, who introduced architect Raymond Fort.
The review board’s liaison, city planner Joseph Eisenberg, gave a background report on the project and noted that the NRD-1 gave the body broader review authority.
This project was also reviewed by the Wynwood Development Review Committee, which granted conditional approval Nov. 12, including asking the applicant to reconsider the proposed artwork screening on the northern garage levels, Mr. Eisenberg said.
Mr. Dombrowski said the developer is excited to bring this mixed-use project to a former industrial site in Wynwood with three frontages.
“We have a large courtyard,” he said, “retail uses on the ground floor, and a large pedestrian crosswalk … it fits the work-live-play vision, and there will be a lot of art opportunities.”
Mr. Fort showed site plans and project renderings, noting the design took into account promoting walkability in the neighborhood.
The architecture also uses rectangular cubic forms and alternating colors to help break up the façade, he said.
There’s not much shade in Wynwood, said Mr. Fort, so the site plan calls for bringing some shade trees in with a landscaping plan that includes palms and evergreens.
Board member Ligia Ines Labrada said the presentation was nicely done and she commended the developer’s team for providing access and cross sections with plenty of retail frontages, which she said will create a phenomenal urban experience.
“I have nothing but compliments for the project,” she said.
Board member Robert Behar said, “I also like the project. You’ve done a very nice job with it.”
Board member Ignacio Permuy was also a fan, commending the “exceptional” design.
“Terrific job,” was the assessment of board member Willy Bermello.
“I’ll vote for it. I really like how you resolved every aspect … I like the massing and articulation, particularly on the ground floor … I don’t have any concerns or objections,” said Mr. Bermello.
But board member Neil Hall was critical of the project. By bringing residential into Wynwood in this fashion, he said, “you destroy the brand.” It goes against the years of work to develop this neighborhood as a special area for “creativity and funkiness,” Mr. Hall said.
“The building you created looks more like it’s coming out of New York – I don’t see a Miami theme …,” Mr. Hall said. “The same thing happened in Midtown. We put up 30-story buildings and destroyed the feeling of Midtown.”
Board member Fidel Perez differed from Mr. Hall.
“You did an excellent job breaking up the uses,” Mr. Perez said. “This project is really well designed.”
Foot traffic is booming on Wynwood’s busy Northwest 24th Street. Now, developers are eyeing the Northwest 28th Street corridor as the next neighborhood hot spot.
The Wynwood-based development firm Fortis Design + Build told the Miami Herald it has two projects planned for the strip: a 15,000-square-foot office/retail center and a 50,000-square-foot commercial space whose use has not yet been finalized.
“We feel that 28th Street is the next 24th Street. That’s why we are so interested in this area,” said David Polinsky, Ph.D. and partner of Fortis Design + Build. “It’ll look like a complete neighborhood within three years.”
The smaller, two-story building, at 2734 NW First Ave., is expected to open in 2020 and cost under $6 million. It will offer 5,000 square feet of ground floor retail space, 5,000 square feet of office space on the second floor and 5,000 square feet of entertainment or amenity space on the roof top. Each floor will have 22-foot ceilings should a tenant want to expand and add a mezzanine.
Jason Chandler, chair of Florida International University’s architecture department, is designing the exterior and interiors. The City of Miami hired ArquitectonicaGEO to design a one-way road and pedestrian-friendly street adjacent to the project.
“You get a Lincoln Road-style experience but in Wynwood,” Polinsky said.
Fortis has submitted for permits, said Polinsky, and should break ground by late January. The building may have a single office tenant and three retail tenants or a single tenant that leases the entire building. “We’ll make our decision on who the tenant or tenants will be once we break ground,” Polinsky said.
The larger, 8-story building at 82 NW 28th St. is still in the design phase, said Polinsky. Groundbreaking is scheduled for 2021.
Wynwood has experienced a boom in office space since 2018, part of Miami’s overall office construction boom that is the largest since 2009.
A growing customer base is driving more developers to Wynwood, Jonathan Rosen, senior associate at JLL, said.
“The key demand is the customer base from tourists and new residents.”
And it’s not over.
“If you compare Wynwood to other submarkets like Brickell,” Rosen said, “Wynwood still has room to grow.”
A new eco-friendly hotel is expected to break ground on the site of the Art by God store in Wynwood.
Miami Beach-based Lucky Shepherd, co-founded by Christine Menedis and Naveen Trehan, will develop Shepherd Eco Wynwood at 60 Northeast 27th Street, joining a number of other hotels that have been proposed in the neighborhood. Hoar Program Management is the contractor on the project.
Touzet Studio is designing the 150-key hotel and Gensler is designing the interiors. In addition to hotel rooms, Shepherd Eco Wynwood will also have up to 48 residential units, according to a press release. The building will feature an outdoor amenity deck with a treehouse, a spa and wellness center, art gallery, rooftop pool and bar, speakeasy, and farm-to-table restaurant called Shepherd Farms.
Construction will begin in the summer. The hotel is expected to open in late 2022.
In Miami, property owners who control more than 9 acres of land can apply for a wide array of zoning changes. They’re called Special Area Plans, or SAPs, and the legislation has allowed for massive, planned projects like Brickell City Centre, River Landing Shops & Residences, the redevelopment of the Miami Design District, and the expansion of the Miami Jewish Home. It has also allowed for future mega-projects like the Magic City Innovation District in Little Haiti, Miami Produce Center in Allapattah, and Mana Wynwood.
On Jan. 15, the city of Miami’s Planning, Zoning and Appeals Board will discuss proposed legislation that could do away with SAPs altogether.
The board voted Wednesday to discuss a rule at its Jan. 15 meeting that would recommend that the city remove SAPs from the Miami 21 zoning code. In the 8 to 1 vote, board member Chris Collins was the lone dissenter.
The ultimate decision on whether to keep SAPs rests with the Miami City Commission. But even if the resolution isn’t approved, board members hope that it will tell elected leaders that SAPs are not beneficial to Miami’s existing neighborhoods and residents.
“I don’t want to send them a weak message,” said the resolution’s proposer, board member Alex Dominguez. “Either get rid of the damn thing … or let us move on.”
Several residents and community activists said SAPs are threatening neighborhoods, clogging roads with additional traffic, and speeding up gentrification. At the very least, community activists want a moratorium on future SAPs until regulations are put in place that govern development and require that affordable housing be offered in exchange for zoning.
“When I sell my home, I will have to leave because I will not be able to afford to live here,” said Jordan Levin, who lives in a house in Buena Vista East that she bought 20 years ago. “Please put a moratorium on these things. They’re the Godzillas of development. Development should not just be for the developers. Development should be for the city.”
Sue Trone, the city’s chief of community planning, argued that SAPs can help parts of Miami move away from the “segregated” uses advocated in the city’s 1959 comprehensive plan into a more mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly environment. And while reforms are needed, Trone argued that SAPs can “do a lot of good for the city.” Land use attorney Neisen Kasdin also begged the board not to “throw the baby out with the bath water” and to instead pursue reforms.
Dominguez, though, said it was best if the city rid itself of SAPs as soon as possible.
“Time is our biggest enemy. The more time we spend kicking things down the road and having meetings, the more developers are going to develop [SAPs] and we’ll have more traffic and we’ll see more people getting displaced,” he said.
Board member Melody Torrens said stopping future SAPs is “starting to make a lot of sense.” Still, she said the commission might not accept the idea, and while reforms are being debated, developers will continue to push SAPs. “If we’re not going to stop them completely, then we definitely need a moratorium while we go through [the legislation],” Torrens said.
Board chairman Charles Garavaglia agreed with Dominguez that passing a rule ending SAPs would make a stronger impact with politicians.
“I just think we should stop SAPs and send that message,” Garavaglia said, “and, ultimately, the commission will do what they want.”
