If you live in Miami, you can probably tell with all the construction sites, ongoing traffic, and new neighbors in your area that among cities in the United States, we are thriving.
But now there’s data to prove it.
And all signs lead to the skies.
“We anticipate Miami will be among the fastest growing cities in terms of tall buildings within the United States,” shared Shawn Ursini, the Senior Database Manager of The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.
It’s a statement that sparks hope for some, like Eli Beracha, the professor and director of the Tibor and Sheila Hollo School of Real Estate.
“The only way that you can really grow here in Southeast Florida is going up," Beracha said.
And concern for others, like City of Miami Commissioner Damian Pardo, who explains to NBC6 that what he worries about most "is our lack of infrastructure." “If you have been in Miami in the last 20 years you have seen that skyline evolve significantly, and it’s continuing to reshape,” Ursini said.
Ursini says when looking at the top 100 tallest buildings in the United States, Miami is home to 18 of them. It puts our city at number 3 for the amount of tallest skyrises behind New York and Chicago.
Our tallest one will be The Waldorf Astoria Hotel and Residences. It’s now under construction and is set to be completed in 2026.
According to Waldorf Astoria’s website, the site will be more than 1,000 feet tall and have 98 floors of residential and hotel space off Biscayne Boulevard.
While studios and one-bedrooms are already sold out, a two-bedroom can go for $3.2 million. And a 4-bedroom? $9.6 million.
Our city’s second tallest building is the Okan Tower. It’s known for its curved façade, location, and partnership with Hilton, as this site will be the new Hilton Miami Bayfront.
You can see it’s still in the works and won’t be completed till 2026. It will only offer hotel rooms, permanent residences and short-term luxury rentals.
But is this what residents in the area want? And what will the impacts of these new spaces bring?
Concerns
“These are becoming neighborhoods. I mean, in the past, you would think about downtown, and it was just a place people left at five o'clock, really, right? No more,” Pardo said. “These are neighborhoods. People care about their parks, they care about their surroundings, they care about the quality of life and they care about the character of their neighborhoods.”
Pardo represents District 2 of Miami, which is home to areas like Brickell, Downtown, Midtown and Coconut Grove.
The people who live there are no strangers to high-rises and have expressed to Pardo the cons of living near them.
“So usually what you'll hear is traffic, you'll hear about flooding, you'll hear about congestion, about kind of like noise pollution, a lot of these other issues, which comes with much higher density in these areas," he said.
Currently, according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, the City of Miami has 25 skyscrapers under construction, which may not seem like a crazy number.
But what is crazy is that our city has grown by 66% in buildings over 100 meters tall in the last 10 years.
And in the next 10 years, it’s expected to keep growing with 54% more buildings.
It’s why Pardo says the way of building skyscrapers now needs to be re-evaluated.
“It's not just about adding density and increasing tax base. That's not the objective. The objective is the quality of that decision and how does it impact the neighborhoods and the residents," he said. "Create more of that balance in harmony as opposed to how we're doing it now, which seems like it's kind of growth spurts and it creates friction, a lot of friction."
But according to Ursini, the skyscrapers being built are responding to a need and it’s not residential or commercial. Instead, Miami’s created a surprising trend by creating more office space.
The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat found in one report that Miami’s office vacancy rate was below the national average. That means people in Miami are working in offices while the rest of the country is working remotely.
When you look at these new sites under construction, at least 14 of them will have partial office space, but some of them will solely be used for work.
“Such as 848 South Brickell, where we have a 13-story office building from the 1980s,” Ursini said.
However, some believe these skyscrapers, regardless of their use, pose a threat to the communities surrounding them.
“Affordable housing and workforce housing is top of mind constantly 24/7 because we do have a crisis," Pardo said. "And we are dealing with a crisis in the urban core where land has so much value that it just makes it very difficult for a developer to come in and provide affordable prices."
“We have fire positions, teachers, the state attorney's office, police, we have all kinds of people…it’s really important, otherwise we can’t provide those services, we won’t have it in the urban core," he said. "The last thing we want is for people who love Miami, who've made a commitment to Miami, to get here and then leave.”
Luxury versus affordable
Real estate experts like Eli Beracha believe that with more proposals in the pipeline to build up, it’s a sign that people want a different way of living that could bring economic growth to the area.
“Developers are not building based on nothing, they're building based on demand. So sometimes it is true that they're a little bit ahead of themselves or behind, but it is usually a sign that growth is happening and we know that it is,” he said. “Every time when you have a lot of construction, that means a lot of jobs, a lot of opportunities for people for either the construction jobs, real estate jobs around them, or the jobs that will be created within those facilities.”
But with units only going as low as $1 million, how can this be affordable?
“When you have more supply into the market, that actually should not concern people in terms of being able to afford, they may not be able to afford a new product because it is very expensive and construction costs are very high, making that, in addition to the land, a very expensive product, but that should not be pricing out of the market of the existing product. If anything, it should help," Beracha said.
Beracha says while the change can be startling, the move to build higher won’t be going away any time soon.
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