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An 82-story tower known as 2nd & 2nd was granted approval last week when Miami’s Office of Zoning granted waivers needed from the Miami 21 zoning code.

A notice issued on the city’s website confirmed the approval was issued November 26. Plans for the tower were first submitted in July 2017, making it 16 months of review.

If construction were to begin today, it would become the tallest building in Miami at its proposed 898-foot height. Brickell’s Panorama Tower is now the tallest at 868 feet, although several buildings are proposed above the 1,000-foot mark including Skyrise, where excavation is underway.

A Courtyard by Marriott hotel would need to be demolished to make way for the new 2nd & 2nd tower.

As reviewed by the UDRB earlier this year, the development would encompass more than 1.5 million square feet, including:

  • 266 hotel rooms
  • 637 residential units
  • 9,245 square feet of retail
  • 553 parking spaces

Convention Center Hotel Corp. of Yonkers, NY submitted the plans. The developer is a subsidiary of AVR Realty. NBWW is the architect.

Courtyard by Marriott to be demolished:

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Source: The Next Miami

Okan Tower is one step closer to beginning construction.

On September 1, contractors filed a dry run permit to begin building a 70-story tower, city records show.

Next week, a phased Class II foundation permit will be filed, along with a master building permit, a consultant working for the developer said.

The filing last week included:

  • 500 sheets for review by city officials
  • $457,707.60 upfront permit fee
  • $163,466,625 total cost of construction
  • 318,090 square feet of hotel, with 294 rooms on 19 floors
  • 512,080 square feet of condo, with 398 rooms on 33 floors
  • 66,920 square feet of office, on 4 floors
  • 37,005 square feet of retail on 1 floor
  • 934,095 total square feet to be built

The hotel will be known as the Hilton Bayfront.

Okan representatives previously told The Next Miami that the tower will top of at 890 feet.

 

Source: The Next Miami

North Beach’s new main street might include tiny apartments, 200-foot towers and homes that double as businesses.

This vision for the “Town Center” area along 71st Street, developed by city planners, is designed to turn a stretch of the island that has seen little development into a hub where residents can live, work, shop and eat without ever getting into a car.

“We think that there’s an opportunity to make Town Center more walkable and more liveable and we want to see Town Center thrive,” said Thomas Mooney, Miami Beach’s planning director. “We wanted to have more of a 24-hour feel.”

Mooney and his team have proposed allowing developers to build up to 200 feet if they provide a public benefit, such as affordable housing or a contribution to a fund that could be used for a variety of neighborhood projects. He said limiting the height to 12 stories (125 feet), which was recommended in the master plan for North Beach, would generate “static” buildings and wouldn’t leave much room for creativity.

“We wanted to build in the ability for a good architect to be able to creatively redistribute” the allowed density in a taller structure, Mooney said.

In addition to allowing micro-units — tiny, furnished apartments in buildings with shared amenities — city planners have recommended permitting artisanal retail where goods like artwork, food and beer are produced and sold on-site and neighborhood fulfillment centers where shoppers can pick up goods they order online. Units where residents can live and work in the same space would also be allowed.

But not everyone agrees with this vision for Town Center.

The redevelopment of the area between Collins Avenue and Indian Creek Drive/Dickens Avenue from 69th Street to 72nd Street was approved by voters last November when they authorized an increase in density. Voters approved an increase in the overall size of buildings in the area, but the referendum didn’t get into specifics. That was left up to the city’s planning department.

Some residents object to allowing 200-foot towers and are skeptical about the micro-units, which they say will only attract tourists. (Short-term rentals are legal in the Town Center area.)

North Beach activist Kirk Paskal said 200-foot towers weren’t what voters envisioned when they cast their ballots because the height increase hadn’t been included in the master plan or agreed to by residents.

“Now suddenly, this new urgency for more height could severely damage the character of North Beach in a drastic and permanent way,” Paskal said in an email. “Any public benefits that may be proposed by way of this last minute effort to stray from the plan, could not justly recompense the harm that would be inflicted on the alluring human scale and cohesive character of North Beach by the incompatible and oppressive height of 200 feet.”

Paula King, a longtime North Beach resident, also has concerns about the maximum height.

“What they’re looking for is to build these high needles that are higher than any other building in North Beach so they can have the view and charge more for it,” King said. “Miami Beach is not New York. We don’t have the infrastructure to support this.”

Tiny Living

Micro-units are a trend in urban areas among residents who are willing to trade space for the opportunity to live in a neighborhood they couldn’t otherwise afford. Projects have sprouted up in Wynwood and downtown Miami, as well as in Miami Beach. A new micro-unit project at 6080 Collins Ave. offers apartments as small as 350 square feet, about the size of two parking spaces. Other micro-unit projects are in the works on South Beach’s Washington Avenue.

Mooney and his team have proposed allowing micro-units in hotels and apartment buildings in Town Center as long as the building includes plenty of shared amenities like community kitchens, business centers and gyms.

Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez is skeptical the micro-units will appeal to North Beach residents, however.

“What you have right there is a massive amount of transient tourism,” Rosen Gonzalez said. “It really is not reflective of what the community wanted,” she added, referring to the micro-units and the proposed height limits. “We can’t turn North Beach into South Beach.”

Others disagree. In order to attract young people and plan for the future, the regulations forTown Center need to leave room for new housing trends, said Commissioner Ricky Arriola.

“I think we need to be open minded and flexible,” Arriola said. “We can’t be rigid and just stick to the way we’ve always done things. The facts are that we are losing our millennial generation across the bay.”

North Beach residents have mixed views on the proposals.

Miguel Gonzalez, 36, said he wasn’t sure there is a market for micro-units right now due to a lack of job opportunities and public transportation. But Gonzalez, a lawyer who lives within walking distance of Town Center, said that could change.

“If you could work and live in the same place, like in downtown Miami, if they can convert this into that kind of area, more young people might be interested,” Gonzalez said.

Judith Acame, 77, lives in the Town Center area and said she thought the micro-units would appeal to young people, but not to low-income retirees like her.

“People my age will have to move to cheaper areas,” Acame said in Spanish.

Acame said she loves living in the neighborhood because she can walk to her yoga and Tai chi classes and to a nearby senior center. If the area gets more expensive and fills with buildings catering to young people.

“I guess I’d have to go to Hialeah, where my brother lives,” Acame said.

Ultimately, the city will have to be flexible in order to attract economic development to North Beach, said Commissioner John Elizabeth Alemán.

“North Beach’s Town Center District has seen little new development since the concept originated in 2003,”Alemán said in an email. “This time around, it is imperative that the Commission err on the side of growth and progress. The North Beach community craves results.”

The planning department’s proposal, included in the draft of an ordinance that will regulate area development, will be evaluated by the city’s planning board on July 24 and by the Land Use and Development committee on July 31. The City Commission will have final say.

The draft ordinance includes a number of other proposals, including provisions to ensure ample space between towers so that air and light filter down, limits on the numbers of hotel rooms and apartments, and noise reduction requirements for businesses that provide entertainment.

Source: Miami Herald

NP International obtained a $95 million construction loan for its Paseo de la Riviera mixed-use project across the street from the University of Miami in Coral Gables.

Click on the photo for a SFBJ rendering sideshow of the Paseo de la Riviera project

Starwood Property Mortgage, as the administrative agent for a group of lenders, assumed the $16.5 million loan originally granted last year by TotalBank and boosted it to $95 million. The borrower is 1350 S. Dixie LLC, an affiliate of NP International led by President Brent Reynolds. The general contractor is Balfour Beatty.

“Paseo de la Riviera will break ground before the end of 2017 and will take two years to complete,” Reynolds said. “Getting the construction loan is a big milestone. We’re pleased to have a great partner like Starwood.”

NP International has yet to announce a hotel brand for the project or select a leasing manager for the commercial space.

The company acquired the 2.7-acre site at 1350 S. Dixie Highway for $44 million in 2016. The 55-year-old Holiday Inn there is being demolished to make way for Paseo de la Riviera.

The project would have 240 hotel rooms, 200 apartments, 4,380 square feet of restaurants, 20,000 square feet of retail, and a parking deck.

“The hotel will have 10 stories, and the apartment building will rise six stories on top of the parking deck,” Reynolds said. “There will be separate pools for apartment residents and hotel guests. The hotel will have a conference room to serve the community, but not full banquet facilities. There really hasn’t been a new or upgraded facilities in quite some time, so to have an upgraded, modern lifestyle brand that serves not only the community and the university, but also the businesses, in the area is a win-win. There will be a paseo for pedestrians to walk between two the buildings, passing from U.S. 1 to a public park. The paseo would draw the community into the project’s open space and encourage both the apartment residents and hotel guests to go downstairs and congregate. It’s almost like an urban living room.”

 

Source: SFBJ

The city of Miami inched one step closer Thursday to a multimillion-dollar quid pro quo that would land it a new administrative building and parking garage, while facilitating the construction of a $465 million mixed-use project on the site of its current headquarters on the north bank of the Miami River.

With a swift vote Thursday morning, the City Commission authorized the appointment of a special estate counsel in the city’s proposed deal to lease its riverside administrative center to property developer Adler Group in exchange for the construction of a new building and parking garage elsewhere in the city.

Under the agreement, the developer would pay the city a projected $335 million over the length of a 90-year ground lease on the city’s two-acre property through rent and a cut of sales. That adds up to a present-day value of about $70 million. The deal was proposed last year by an Adler Group affiliate, Lancelot Miami River.

City employees would remain in the building at 444 SW Second Ave., which formerly belonged to Florida Power and Light, until the construction of its new headquarters in 2020.

Rendering of Adler Group’s Riverside Nexus Central. Studio X Architects

For Adler Group, the land swap is part of a larger plan to erect a sprawling mixed-use project on the river dubbed Nexus Riverside Central. The project would be built on the city site and a neighboring 1.5 acre parcel. It would include three 36-story residential towers with 1,350 units, a 150-room hotel and 30,000 square feet of shops and restaurants.

Despite Thursday’s vote, the proposal is far from set in stone. Even if a deal is reached by commissioners, who authorized hiring the law firm without much discussion, the question would then be put on the November ballot and at the mercy of voters.

The deal appeared to be headed for the shelf before Weiss Serota Helfman Cole & Bierman, a Coral Gables law firm, was chosen from a pool of 16 candidates. Commissioners first rejected the city attorney’s choice of Shutts & Bowen, raising questions about whether there would be enough time to get a deal together and on the November ballot.

Commissioners said they were uncomfortable that Shutts & Bowen, a Miami firm, represents a plaintiff suing the city, and also that former commissioner Marc Sarnoff currently works as an attorney at the firm.

“It’s the responsibility of the special counsel to ensure that the city gets a favorable deal,” said Miami Mayor Tomás Regalado.

A review of the proposal last year noted that the city would pay up to $123 million for its new 375,000-square-foot office and 1,200-car garage, a roughly $50 million gap from what Adler will pay to lease the riverside property. Administrators say early negotiations quickly cut into the difference, although the most recent development agreement, crafted back in November, doesn’t specify where those numbers stand.

Weiss Serota will help to negotiate further. The commission in a prior resolution voted that when the city undergoes a major real estate deal, a special counsel is needed to ensure the city receives a fair deal, and Florida law states that any long-term waterfront lease requires a voter referendum.

Regalado said he was hopeful that a deal would be reached and that a motion would be put to voters in November.

“The city’s riverside administrative center, located on highly sought-after riverfront land, lacks adequate parking and poses a challenge for residents to access,” Regalado said. “It’s not client-friendly.”

If approved and favorably voted on, the new administrative headquarters would likely be built in one of three spots: near Marlins Park in Little Havana, behind Lyric Theater in Overtown or inside the seven-acre Link at Douglas complex that Adler is building at the Douglas Road Metrorail Station.

 

Source: Miami Herald

PanoramaTower2Foundation construction at developer Tibor Hollo’s Panorama Tower in Brickell, the future tallest tower in Miami, has reached ground level, and appears poised to go vertical any moment now.

About five months ago, they had just begun driving piles down for the foundations, when construction of the 822 foot tower had finally picked up after an agonizingly slow beginning.

 

Source: Curbed Miami