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.
Tag: Renovation & Repair
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.
Construction Begins on Flagler Street’s Big Redo
Construction began last week on the big renovation of Downtown Miami’s Flagler Street. According to the project’s website “construction fencing was up and in-field mobilization” began on Phase One of the project, the block in front of the Dade County Courthouse, on January 4th. A week later, the road has been ripped up and new sewer/drainage things are lined up, ready to go into place.
Continue reading “Construction Begins on Flagler Street’s Big Redo”
