Swire Selling Prime Miami Site After Office Plan Falters
By Julia Echikson January 27, 2025 5:58 pm
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After failing to launch an office development, Swire Properties has put a prime site in Miami’s Brickell district up for sale, Bloomberg reported.
The 2.8-acre parcel sits between 700 Brickell Avenue and 799 Brickell Plaza, three blocks south of the Miami River and just east of Swire’s 2.5 million-square-foot Brickell City Centre mixed-use property. CBRE is brokering the sale.
In 2022, banking on a new crop of finance and tech companies, Swire partnered with Related Companies on a plan to develop a 68-story, 1.5 million-square-foot office building to be called One Brickell City Centre. But the Class A development failed to secure an anchor tenant, typically a requirement for lenders before providing a construction loan. Swire’s deal with Related has now expired, said a source with knowledge of the arrangement.
“The current office market has been challenging, and the pre-leasing for that specific scheme has not materialized in the way that we had hoped,” Henry Bott, president of Swire, told Bloomberg.
Last year, the project also faced scrutiny when debris from the site fell onto the road during a demolition, according to CBS News Miami. No injuries were reported.
Related Companies has already moved on in Brickell. The New York-based developer has partnered with billionaire Ken Griffin to develop the global headquarters for the financier’s financial firms, hedge fund Citadel and market maker Citadel Securities. The 54-story skyscraper, which has yet to break ground, will face Biscayne Bay in Brickell.
The district has become a hotbed of luxury condo development. Around the corner from Swire’s site, Jorge Pérez’s Related Group is building a Baccarat-branded condo tower after securing $328 million from Bank OZK in March. Mast Capital also scored a $600 million financing package to build a Cipriani-branded condo complex.
Swire, too, is getting in the fray, launching sales for a Mandarin Oriental-branded condo development on the nearby Brickell Key in 2023.
Julia Echikson can be reached at jechikson@commercialobserver.com.
