70-story tower ups contribution and enters Brickell Metrorail zone

A 70-story tower encompassing 464 residences, retail space and a performing arts venue near the Brickell Metrorail station has won unanimous county approval to apply development criteria of the Metrorail Subzone of the Rapid Transit Zone.

In the process, Millennium Developments of Brickell LLC last week raised its voluntary contribution to improve area transit stations from the planned $700,000 to an even $1 million and added to its own efforts to increase area mobility, sealing the deal.

Area county Commissioner Eileen Higgins waived a developer’s presentation to commissioners and instead made her own.

“I have fully reviewed this application as well as my team has gone out to the site to look at the suggested improvements,” she said. “This is a beautiful building…. Not only is it going to be an iconic structure near our Brickell Metrorail station, but it also very innovatively manages the way we get traffic off the street and that all of the circulation is happening on the property.”

Commissioners had no issues with the building – but they commented on the model’s design.

“If you turn that building towards the commissioner it looks like a howling wolf, don’t you think so?” asked Keon Hardemon.

Ms. Higgins took the question in the spirit from which it came.

“It actually was designed in honor of my alma mater, the University of New Mexico, where our thing was the lobos,” she quipped.

The tower is to front Southwest Eighth and Ninth streets and Southwest Second Avenue, replacing a gas station and vacant lands beside it. It’s near not only the Brickell Metrorail station but is directly east of the Underline.

A staff report to the commission says “the current use on the site does not provide any street-front activation at the Underline, or connections to mass transit, and [does] not provide the highest levels of development density and intensity that is ideal for the urban core.”

The report notes multiple nearby sites whose developmental capacity has been elevated to that of the Metrorail subzone, which takes zoning and use control from the City of Miami’s regulations and moves it to the more developer-friendly county subzone rules.
The project is to have 653 internal parking spaces.