Moving Fast at Midtown Miami

Multi-Billion-Dollar Project is Alive With Construction Activity

By Scott Judy

The old 55-acre Buena Vista Rail Yard in the Midtown area of Miami is abuzz with construction activity, as several large general contractors dance around each other in their efforts to build their portions of the emerging Midtown Miami mixed-use development.

When completed, the reportedly $3 billion development is scheduled to include roughly 3,000 condominium residential units and an estimated 1 million sq. ft. of retail, according to the developer, Midtown Group. The development team is a partnership between Midtown Equities of New York and Samuel & Co. of Boca Raton.

The contractors - which so far include Centex Construction of Plantation, Bovis Lend Lease of Miami and The Tower Group of Davie - are working in close proximity to each other on the increasingly congested site.

Centex is building two condo towers - referred to as Two Midtown and Four Midtown - both of which will reach a height of 30 stories and total roughly 1 million sq. ft. each, including parking, said John Tombari, director of construction for Laval Management Group, the project's program manager. All of the residential towers will feature retail on the ground floor.

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Meanwhile, The Tower Group is steaming ahead with its Shops at Midtown project, a retail complex that will measure more than 1.1 million sq. ft., including parking. Tower's portion will be the first to wrap up, and is scheduled to open to the public at the end of this year. When that happens and pedestrians start frequenting the facility, Tombari said, the site will become even trickier.

"It's going to become a very different place to work," he said.

In between Centex's two towers and the Shops, Bovis Lend Lease is constructing a $57 million mixed-use building known as Midtown Miami East Block, or Mid-Block. Occupying this building will be East Block Commercial, an entity affiliated with the Midtown Group, and Developers Diversified Realty of Beachwood, Ohio, a company serving multiple roles in the development of the project.

Also located here will be the Community Development District, a Miami municipal entity created for this effort. The CDD is overseeing the more than $100 million of infrastructure construction - including new roads and utilities - necessary for this development.

According to Bovis, this Mid-Block building - scheduled for completion later this year - will feature 139 condominium units, 23 office/loft units, more than 88,000 sq. ft. of retail space and approximately 127,500 sq. ft. of parking. The first floor will be dedicated to retail, while the second floor will feature parking surrounded by office space. Parking will continue up to the third and fourth floors, where loft apartments will make up the perimeter. Residential units will then make up the building's fifth through 11th floors.

Additionally, at presstime, Turner Construction Co. of Miami was pricing Three Midtown, another residential tower that was still in the design stage. Yet another tower, One Midtown, had not been designed yet.

Each building has its own separate architect, in an effort to provide some diversity of design in this emerging "city-within-a-city." Tombari calls the total package a "good combination of retail, residential, commercial and entertainment." He estimated that it could take six to eight years to fully realize the owner's current plans for the entire development.

As the project moves forward, Tombari expects the coordination between the various contractors and subcontractors will become only more trying.

"It's a constant challenge every day making sure we can all work together in this," he said. "It's zero setback, so you're truly in an urban parcel, and our laydown area is about to go away."

For now, though, as the project gears up, he's staying positive.

"It's going very well, and I think the future outlook for the project is very good," he said. "We've been fortunate enough to find some contractors who are really strong in this market, and created a good partnership - and partnership is what it's all about on this entire project."