Craig Robins

The Miami Design District, the open-air luxury mall known for its art installations, has slowly emerged as a marquee shopping destination, akin to Fifth Avenue in New York City and Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. 

Despite luxury sales across the board taking a hit in 2023 — after shoppers depleted their pandemic savings, prices skyrocketed and layoffs spread — the Design District remained red hot. Sales at the 18-block mall grew by 10 percent last year. 

The upswing came on top of three years of impressive growth. In 2020, sales shot up by 100 percent year-over-year, even though the mall remained closed for three months. The following year, the district saw a 125 percent increase, which was compounded by another 50 percent in 2022. 

“Several of our stores are now one or two [best performing] in the entire country,” Craig Robins of district developer Dacra said. “A lot of the fashion brands consider the Design District now globally strategic, like one of 14 locations in the world, which means they wanted to have special global flagship stores.”

Dior tripled the size of its menswear store; so did Balenciaga. Other major expansions now underway include those of Saint Laurent, Fendi, Valentino and Louis Vuitton. 

The Design District’s main competitor, the Bal Harbour Shops, is feeling the heat: Its owner installed a billboard ad for the Shops at the entrance of the District. “What do you do when you want the best location for your campaign?” Robins cheekily wrote in response on Instagram. “You go to the Design District of course.”

The district’s expansion is far from over. Robins’ Dacra, along with several partners, purchased a 15-building portfolio in the west end of the neighborhood for $165 million in late 2022.

A year later, Robins tapped none other than David Chipperfield, fresh off winning his Pritzker Architecture Prize, to design the extension. “We began the dialogue with him before he won the Pritzker prize. The fact that he won the prize was an unexpected but wonderful bonus,” Robins said.