City OKs Plans for $1.8B Mixed-Use Tower

MIAMI-In what is poised to become the tallest building in Miami, locally based Florida East Coast Realty Inc. has receive city approval for One Bayfront Plaza, a $1.8-billion mixed-use development at 100 S. Biscayne Blvd.

The project will consist of two 70-story towers that will include two million sf of office space, 112,000 sf of retail space, an 850-room four-star convention hotel and 120,000 sf of exhibition and banquet facility space. The Downtown project will overlook Biscayne Bay and Bayfront Park. The project is expected to break ground in 2011 and will take approximately three years to build.

With the city’s approval–called a major-use special permit–developers will begin planning and marketing for the project, and the preparation of construction documents, FECR vice president Philip Dahan tells GlobeSt.com.

An 18-story, 350,000-sf office building, which is also called One Bayfront Plaza, currently exists on the site. That building will be demolished to make room for the new development, Dahan says. “The site is right in the center of Downtown,” he says. “Miami does not have a major convention center or a convention hotel right now.”

Terra Architecture designed the building, which will be 1,049 feet tall. Among unique features of the project is its steel structure and fluid dampers to absorb wind gusts. Developers are also seeking silver LEED certification on the project. This will be the first hotel built north of the Miami River in 25 years, in a building developers hope will become a “signature” building for Miami.

“We have a vision for an icon,” says FECR chairman and president Tibor Hollo, in a prepared statement. “As part of my legacy, I want to leave this city with a high-profile building on par with the Chrysler building in New York or the Sears Tower in Chicago, a tower that is home to major banks and law firms.”