|
N MIAMI CONDO NEWS — All About Condo Living in the Magic City — Edited by Heinz Dinter, PhD |
|||||||||
Mary Brickell Village comes to life May 16, 2006 • After years of delays, a shopping center in the heart of downtown Miami begins to take form. Regions Bank and P.F. Chang’s are the first two establishments to open in the Mary Brickell Village. Four years, two developers and a few hurricanes after construction crews broke ground to create a shopping hub in the heart of downtown Miami, signs of life are emerging at the Mary Brickell Village project. On Monday Chinese bistro P.F. Chang’s became the first of seven major restaurants to open its doors at the open-air shopping center that straddles South Miami Avenue between Ninth and 10th streets. The 195,000 square-foot plaza will eventually be home to a gourmet Publix Supermarket, a Bally’s Total Fitness gym, Starbucks and more than 70 shops and retail outlets. Surrounded by towering office blocks, condos and construction cranes, the $100 million project is widely seen as the last major dining and retail development that can be squeezed into downtown. “Land is at a real scarcity, and the high-rises have been so profitable that nobody had set aside space for retail usage like this,” said Cynthia Cohen, president of Strategic Mindshare, a Miami-based retail strategy consulting firm. “All the other plots of land are taken up by vertical multiuse buildings.” With its low-slung construction, fountains and benches, the Village is designed to be a breezy shopping oasis amid the concrete jungle, said the center’s general manager, Marcos Freire. Along with dining establishments and upscale retail outlets, the Village will also have shops designed to meet neighborhood needs, such as a shoe-repair store, a dry cleaner and a teeth-whitening center, he said. “This is the prototype of the open-air lifestyle center that everyone is trying to do,” he said. Lifestyle centers, which are open-air shopping areas that tend to be more pedestrian friendly and smaller than traditional malls, are one of the new trends in retailing. Ultimately the Village will sit in the shadow of a 34-story condominium slated to be built on top of its seven-story, 900-car garage. That project, called the Skyline at Mary Brickell Village, is expected to be complete by the end of 2007, Freire said. The Village has been a long time coming. Originally planned to open in fall of 2003, financing and permitting issues plagued the center, Freire said. Last year, the original developer, Constructa (which was behind the CocoWalk project), turned it over to Canada’s Ivanhoe Cambridge. But with the opening of Regions Bank a few weeks ago and P.F. Chang’s Monday, major construction at the site should be finished within two months, said Freire. “We are trying to finish as much as we can before hurricane season,” he said over the din of earthmovers. “The only thing that could push us back from our July schedule is a bad storm.” When Hurricane Katrina swept through last year, it toppled a crane and lured away workers to better-paying construction jobs, Freire said. But the wait has been worth it, said P.F. Chang’s Operating Partner Dave Currey. “We’re excited to be part of what may be the first and last dining center in the area,” he said as the first curious customers started walking into the 250-seat establishment. Standing outside the restaurant, Gwen Carrion said the neighborhood was in desperate need of a place like the Village, where she would be able to dine, shop or run errands during her lunch break. “It looks like our patience is paying off,” Currey said. Source: www.MiamiHerald.com.
|
Top |
miamiMagic.net Directory |
Magic Condo News |
We invite
comments and contributions.
Not yet a subscriber to
Grand Lifestyle published every month?
The miamiMagic.net news journal is an email service designed with you in mind. We think you will enjoy reading it. However, if you wish to unsubscribe, please click here.
You have my 100% guaranty
for protecting your privacy: Copyright
© 2006 Grand Lifestyle Publisher |
|
||||||||
