Part of the heritage of Miami Beach is the
unbelievable pace of its transformation. In the words of William Cary, the city’s assistant planning
director “What happened there in less than a decade is absolutely mind-boggling”.
High-end neighborhoods come and go, though few
swing from blighted status to the height of luxury living in just one decade.
But in Miami Beach just about anything seems
possible. There is no shortage of dreamers and visionaries, and men with the
tenacity to battle to the bitter end for what they envision will play out —
someday.
That’s what happened in the South of Fifth Street
neighborhood, where the city took on an ambitious German real estate investor
in the struggle to redefine an area that criminals and castoffs had all but
taken over.
Almost implausibly, South of Fifth has emerged as
the most expensive section of Miami Beach. A string of high-rise condos along
the water, which were at the center of the struggle over the city’s development
15 years ago, are selling apartments for record prices.
Last year, a penthouse at one of two Continuum
towers sold for $25 million, then the highest sale for an apartment in Miami
Beach. In late December, a penthouse at the neighboring Icon tower sold for
just under $21 million, a record for a bay-facing apartment in the city. A
lower-rise 50-unit development, One Ocean, has yet to start construction, but
has only three apartments that are not spoken for.
Today the area’s streets are clean, the vagrants
are gone and the lower-lying Art Deco buildings the city fought to preserve by
establishing a historic district have been upgraded. More than a dozen
restaurants, including several considered the most exclusive in Miami Beach,
have opened in the neighborhood, which is also home to the 18-acre South Pointe
Park.
Of all the high-end stories of rapid urban
renewal and massive accumulation of wealth I have encountered around the world
in the past year, the area South of Fifth Street stands out for the sheer pace
of its transformation. * Source New York Times
To Buy, Sell or Rent Properties in Miami go to http://www.JuanSolerRealtor.com
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