New Miami River Development Niche Opening

"There are some very good opportunities here from a standpoint of pricing," Lewis Goodkin, a Miami-based commercial real estate consultant, tells GlobeSt.com. "All it's going to take is a few success stories, and there will be those, to set the wheels in motion."

It will cost about $80 million to complete the five-year dredging project, which would restore the main channel's original depth and abate years of industrial environmental contamination. City and county taxpayers would pay about $20 million of the cost, with the US Army Corps of Engineers picking up the difference.

Much of the optimism for development, though, is largely centered on the river's impact as a major shallow-draft port. In a recent survey, the not-for-profit Miami River Commission estimated the river produces nearly $4 billion a year in annual economic impact as the principal trade link with the Caribbean.

But agencies such as the city's Downtown Development Authority already are tracking the progress on several commercial projects proposed on shore-side sites primarily near the mouth of river.

Among them are River Renaissance II, a mixed-use office-retail project; Brickell on the River, a mixed-use residential project; Brickell Village, a mixed-use residential, retail and entertainment project, all proposed on opposite sides of the roadway at the southern entrance to the Brickell Avenue Bridge; and Brickell Shipyard, a mixed-use office, restaurant and dry-dock project at the southern entrance of the Southwest Second Avenue Bridge.

What may be less obvious is the potential for more moderate-scale multifamily projects farther upstream, Goodkin says.

"The Miami River represents a tremendous opportunity," he notes. "It's really a diamond in the rough in the truest sense. It's been used much more for industrial than for any other purpose. But there is growth opportunities to address more moderately priced housing and commercial developments."