First the Good News …

By Helen Hill

The Savoy should soon be putting on the Ritz again.

With some 8,000 new condos (and 17,500 more in the next two years) slated to open in Miami, the market might seem a trifle oversupplied, but signs of life abound.

New projects are still being announced — priced mainly in the upper echelon and targeting buyers who actually want to keep their (gold-plated) toothbrushes in a Miami pad while they enjoy the scene. And a New York Times reporter who dined here recently commented that as a result of an influx of brand name chefs and outposts of famous restaurants, “Miami has become one of America’s food towns.”

Some Developments Coming Off the Drawing Board

Palazzo del Sol, with 47 new condominiums ranging in size from 3,700 square feet to 25,000 square feet and priced well into the millions of dollars, is planned for tony Fisher Island, the 216-acre enclave reached by ferry from Miami Beach. Investors New York-based Somerset Partners LLC are investing $300 million in a partnership with developers Fisher Island Holdings LLC. A master plan for the island is also in the works.

Not so many years ago, the nearest Ritz-Carlton establishments were in Palm Beach or Naples, a couple of hours’ drive from Miami. Now there are three in the area (Key Biscayne, Coconut Grove, South Beach) and the newest, The Ritz-Carlton Club and Residences on Collins Avenue, will add another tower to the three buildings (including a restored Seville Beach Hotel) already under way. The new tower, designed by Luis Revuelta of Revuelta Vega Leon of Miami, will target younger buyers looking for luxury in units with smaller (by Ritz-Carlton standards) floor plans, either to live in or use as a pied-à-terre. The eight-story mid-rise, on the west side of Collins at 29th Street, will offer 55 condos ranging from 900 to 2,400 square feet, configured as 36 one-bedroom units, 17 two-bedroom units and two three-bedroom units. Owners will have access to all the Ritz-Carlton services and luxuries, including pools, spa and restaurants in the beachfront Ritz-Carlton Club and Residences across the road. There's no hotel there, so only residents and Club members will be able to use the full property and have the privacy not found in a condo hotel. Co-developers are Diego Lowenstein, CEO of Lionstone Development, and Edgardo Defortuna, president of Fortune International.

Historic Hotels Revived

Seven decades ago the then-new Savoy Hotel was the place to see and be seen in Miami Beach, an oceanfront Art Deco-style hotel oozing elegance and style. Now South of Fifth Street has come full circle since its 1930s and ’40s heydays, once again known as a throbbing center of South Beach.

The Savoy, fronting 200 feet of beach at 455 Ocean Drive, is being transformed by CMA Development Group, award-winning architect Allan T. Shulman (named 2006 Firm of the Year by the American Institute of Architects, Miami) and noted interior designer Charles Allem into 111 ultra-luxury residences. Fendi Casa, the home design wing of the luxury fashion house, will provide furnishings, furniture and hand-crafted Italian linens. There will be 87 exclusive resort residences, including 30 ocean residences and 57 condominium-hotel suites in studio, one-, two- and three-bedroom floor plans ranging from 563 to 3,700 square feet. A luxury penthouse will offer forever ocean views.

The Savoy will feature all the expected services and amenities, including granite kitchen countertops, marble baths, Miele appliances, exotic wood kitchen cabinets and Total Control Home Technology Systems. A gourmet restaurant with indoor/outdoor and late night dining, a lounge and martini bar, an elite spa furnished by Fendi Casa and a state-of-the-art fitness center are also planned. Other luxury services include private jet service, Rolls-Royce Phantom shuttle service, personal “majordomo” service, daily housekeeping services, personal in-suite chefs, private shoppers and fashion consultants, and on-call nutritionists, personal trainers, tailors and physicians.

Shulman’s design incorporates three new oceanfront buildings and a new street-front glass lobby, in addition to the restoration and adaptive reuse of the historic 1935 Savoy and 1941-vintage Arlington hotels. His intimately scaled contemporary additions will reinvest the site, which is sandwiched between identical large 1970s tower slabs, into its urban context. Inverting the traditional masonry and stucco skin of Miami Beach buildings, Shulman has created crystalline structures open completely to the ocean and to the garden. To maintain wide-view corridors, the three buildings were designed as separate and permeable slivers, each comprising a series of stacked concrete trays with glass walls. In a further departure from historical style, the three buildings are topped with sculptural metal roofs that undulate in the direction of the ocean. Each seven-story end sliver aligns and caps the historic structure behind. They provide luxury units with broad, deep wrapping terraces, transparent walls and expansive views. Of the three oceanfront buildings, the center sliver is exceptionally slender. It floats over a garden on columns that raise it over a pool of water. Balconies on the east and west side cantilever as much as 12 feet into space. Two-story outdoor living rooms on the penultimate floor provide a gracious outdoor living and entertaining environment. On the street front, a new two-story lobby and dining space fills the gap between the two existing buildings, and the landscaped outdoor courtyards serve as a transition from the bustle of Miami to a serene sanctuary.

A block away, at Fourth Street and Collins Avenue, Savoy Lofts will offer 24 lofts in a mixed-use complex of commercial, retail and residential spaces, which essentially form a wrapper to conceal a 150-car parking garage. The garage, which will serve the nearby Savoy, also serves as a pedestal for the six penthouse townhouses that occupy its roof. Groundbreaking is planned for mid-2007 with completion slated for the end of 2008.

Now Some Other Indicators

A few weeks ago we wrote that owing to changing market conditions, some developers are changing their minds on condo-hotel units and switching to building hotels only. That’s what has happened at Ocanos, planned as a five-star oceanfront condo-hotel on a 12-acre site in Islamorada in the Florida Keys, 90 minutes from Miami. Now developer Ceebraid Signal has suspended sales in favor of a five-star luxury hotel for the site. But Adam Schlesinger, president of Ceebraid Signal, is keeping his fingers crossed: “We’re confident that the condo/hotel formula is not a fad or a trend; it is simply a victim of a skeptical housing market, and will return in the near future, especially if there are key elements in place like the sea and the sand combined with top-tier luxury.”

The Flip Side of Flipping

Shed a little tear for all those buyers who rushed to buy preconstruction condos with dreams of selling them quickly and pocketing a profit and who instead got caught in the downturn. Until now, many precon buyers had the choice of walking away from thousands of dollars of deposit money or forking out hundreds of thousands to close and own the property, in the hope that it could be rented or sold once the buildings were completed.

Now Mark Zilbert of Miami-based Zilbert Realty Group is offering a sellers program that lets hapless preconstruction buyers wriggle out of a nightmare scenario with their deposits 100 percent intact. He offers to buy condos at their preconstruction prices and in turn to sell those condo units in bulk or individually at the original preconstruction contract price plus a brokerage fee and developer transfer fee. In effect, paper appreciation has vanished and prices are back to where they were before the whole condo balloon inflated!

Kudos

To: W South Beach Hotel & Residences for being ranked in the Top Ten of Travel and Leisure’s selection of 100 of the most exciting developments to invest in for a second home. The 20-story building at 21st Street and Collins Avenue will have 419 condos priced from $750,000.

Helen Hill is a freelance writer specializing in real estate and lifestyle topics. Please send news items on Miami-Dade real estate to hhill@miamisunpost.com