All Aboard Florida, eat your heart out. Although the passenger rail system’s proposal to construct a 991 foot tower (1,000 above sea level) at its currently-under-construction MiamiCentral Terminal in Downtown MIami has reportedly been approved by the Federal Aviation Administration, that’s certainly not the first giant train station/tower to be planned for the site.
Month: January 2016
Visualizing the Booms & Busts of Miami Development Through History
Miami real estate is well known for its boom-and-bust cycles of growth. This is a metropolitan area notorious for wild land speculation, for disreputable hucksters selling naive Northerners plots of the Everglades that are still underwater, and for calamitous real estate collapses when the next hurricane hits or foreign capital dries up. Each boom also leaves a distinct architectural layer on the city, making them readily observable to the trained eye. Gridics data breaks down these trends, both architectural and market, in fascinating detail.
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In South Beach, an Historic Home is Being Adapted to Retail With a New ‘Vitrine’ Facade
A small single-family home at 909 Collins Avenue, right in the thick of South Beach, is being adaptively reused as a retail space with the addition of a glassy, vitrine-like space in the house’s front yard — literally encasing the old facade in glass almost like an historic reliquary and creating a vaulted front space — and a two story retail addition in the back yard.
Inside Drug Lord Pablo Escobar’s Soon-to-be-Demolished Miami Beach Home
Cocaine is to Miami what Opium is to Chinatown, what Marijuana is to Amsterdam, and what hallucinogenic frogs are to the jungle. It has a certain iconic cultural connection, a connection manifested in long parties at the club as well as the memories of places where the drug has affected the city. Think of the building boom of the 1980s that was partly funded with cocaine cash or the parking lot outside Dadeland Mall that was the site of the Dadeland Mall Massacre of 1979. Think of drug lord Pablo Escobar’s Miami Beach mansion.
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Check Out These Four Adorable Buildings for Sale in South Beach
There is an allure to owning a quaint little apartment building, making friends with all your tenants, keeping up with building gossip, getting involved in each others lives, lowning sweet old Mrs. Dixie over in 2A a cup of sugar, that sort of thing. Places like that are probably more common in sitcoms (On I Love Lucy, the Mertzes were the landlords and best friends of the Ricardos, and hilarity ensued) and romantic comedies staring Meg Ryan, but hey, that’s not saying the real life version isn’t impossible.
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The Plan to Turn the Rickenbacker Causeway Into ‘Rickenbacker Park’ is Now A Lot Bolder
Miami-based architect Bernard Zyscovich has unveiled an expanded, bolder design for his Plan Z, a proposal to create a linear park and network of protected bicycle lanes along the length of the Rickenbacker Causeway to Key Biscayne. They’re calling it Rickenbacker Park.
Miami’s Most Iconic Architectural Style and the Annual Art Deco Weekend Poster
Art Deco Weekend, the annual festival celebrating that eponymous architectural style, Miami Beach’s (and Miami’s) great collection of deco architecture, and a lot of kitschy Miami history, is here again.
The deco love fest runs through the weekend, complete as always, with an official poster, a street fair on Ocean Drive, lectures, events, and lots of loud, retro clothing making rare appearances from the backs of closets across Miami. The festival’s deco-inspired posters, which are always original artistic creations, show just how much Miami’s perception of its own unique variety of 1930s and ’40s art deco has changed over the years, and even year to year… in effect showing how versatile and ingenious those old designs — think of the Coast Guard Station in Lummus Park or a streamline modernist house designed for indoor-outdoor subtropical living — are themselves.
Lone Chimney by the Bay Needs a Home and $295,000 to Make it Whole Again
According to the listing agent, Brian Carter with Douglas Elliman, there was once a house on this leafy, sunny plot of land, on a quiet street in an historic neighborhood by Biscayne Bay. Did the old wooden house burn down, leaving the chimney the only thing left standing, before it was put on the market for $295,000?
No, actually, the previous owners tore it down, despite the historic value, and yet for some reason the chimney’s still here. Moving forward, designs for a new 2-story, wooden vernacular bungalow are in process with the City of Miami Historic Preservation Board, with wrap around porch and old Miami charm. Unfortunately it will actually be brand new Miami. More unfortunately the old house was probably built of that great old wood, legendary for its strength and its present-day rarity, Dade County Pine.
Icon Brickell’s ‘Iconic’ Pool is Having Very Iconic Issues
Icon Brickell, the gigantic trio of conjoined condo towers that dominate Brickell Point (the spot where the Miami River meets Biscayne Bay) like Miami’s Rock of Gibraltar, may not be as nearly as rock solid as it looks.
Designed by Arquitectonica, Icon Brickell was once developer The Related Group‘s pride and joy. The megaproject, a symbol of the real estate boom in which it was built as well as the spectacular crash that began before its completion, although only seven years old, has a two-acre amenity deck complete with a 40-person hot tub and infinity pool the size of an airport runway that is making swimmers slip and slam into things before they can reach the pool, which is itself leaking into the parking garage below it; the biggest symptoms of structural issues that residents complain exist throughout the entire structure, reports the Miami Herald.
Apparently the problems are due to a pattern of quickie construction adopted by architects and developers feeling the pressure to produce in the final heady days of the condo boom of the 2008s. Other towers have had similar problems, although Icon Brickell’s sheer magnitude likely makes its situatiohn one of the worst. So, Icon’s condo association has begun a complete amenity deck rehab that could take a year or more while suing general contractor Moriarty & Associates for faulty construction, and probably mentally preparing themselves to face whatever problems are unearthed next.
Adorably Adorable 1940s House Lists at the End of Pine Tree Drive for $5 Million
This cutie-patootie of a house on Miami Beach’s iconic Pine Tree Drive just hit the market in December for $4.85 million. Built in 1940, the house’s bones are full of art deco charm, including corner windows, some fabulous terrazzo, and coffered ceilings.
The 3-bedroom, 3-bath, 3,350 square feet house has been sensitively updated, and also has sort of a wrap-around pool with stepping stone things that kind of form an island in the middle of it. And if it may be said, the furniture is also very nice. The broker’s remarks say the house has a “prestige location at the end of the street,” which is a rather nice way of saying it’s one lot in from busier Alton Road. Prestige? Well, ok.
