Swire’s U.S. Statement
As striking as is the interior of Swire’s Brickell City Centre, where every turn of every corner is a possible photo for Architectural Digest, it’s the parking garage that impressed me most.
Underground garages are essentially non-existent in this neck of downtown Miami, which has a shipping canal running through it from nearby Biscayne Bay. The soil is sandy, and when you dig down 10 feet or so, water starts seeping in. But Swire, the China-based developer with few projects in the U.S., was intent on putting a parking area below its luxury retail center. And not a small one, either — two levels over five blocks to accommodate 1,600 cars.
Swire’s engineers attacked the challenge with a method borrowed from tunnel builders called “deep soil mixing.” Excavation happens, then water is drained out. Then more digging and more drainage, more digging and more drainage, and on and on it goes. Injection of soil into the muck brings it up to the texture of concrete. It was a long, laborious, and, needless to say, expensive undertaking.
It was also a symbol of Swire’s commitment to creating a luxury neighborhood in a heretofore office-space-dominated banking district. I spent a few days probing nearly every nook and cranny of this project on a press tour in June, and, in so doing, a few of the other reporters and I mused that the stated $1.1 billion price tag on Brickell City seemed a little light. Two luxury high-rises, the East hotel, and the City Centre added up to 5.4 million sq. ft. of high-end real estate.
“Actually, it was closer to one billion dollars,” Swire Properties U.S. President Kieran Bowers told me one night after dinner at East’s Quinto La Huella — Uruguayan cuisine; check it out. “We came in at a good time, during the recession, when land costs were negotiable and Miami’s reputably difficult construction crews were amenable to working with Swire.”
It also helped that well-financed Swire built Brickell City Centre using its own money.
Swire’s particular about the projects it undertakes. The 300-year-old company adheres to a strict formula: Find a place it can own that (a) will support luxury residential and hotels, (b) that is well situated within a metro area, and (c) that is on a mass transit line.
An integral feature of this development that is bound to escape the notice of casual visitors is the Eighth Street Metromover station that carries shoppers to the mall and luxury apartment dwellers to the airport. In a precedent-setting arrangement with Miami officials, Swire renovated the station and will manage and maintain it for the next 98 years.
Buy when the market is down, goes the saying, and Swire did that in Brickell City. When ground broke on their project, the housing market was in collapse and new-but-empty condos were as numerous in Miami as empanada shops. Early indications are that Swire’s timing was good. Eduardo Pruna, director of sales for Reach and Rise, Brickell City’s two apartment towers, says sales are brisk among wealthy South Americans looking for luxe digs in Miami.
Indeed, my limo driver from the airport told me that living near South Beach is yesterday, and that people with some money want a sophisticated, urban living experience with access to shopping and top restaurants. “I pick them up and run them to the beach in 10 to 15 minutes,” he said.
Miami is happy the Hong Kong-based developer crossed to their shores. Interviewed by the Miami Sun Sentinel when Brickell City opened a year ago, Alyce Robertson, executive director of the Miami Downtown Development Authority, pronounced her blessing on the site. “This destination is — and I don’t wanna overuse the word — pivotal,” she said.
Al Urbanski
[email protected], @AlUrbanski (Twitter)