Miami Area, Dubbed Wall Street South, To Get Its First Trading Floor

Greater Miami has attracted more real estate interest from financial firms since the pandemic prompted businesses to look outside New York City, and now the area dubbed Wall Street South is about to get its first securities facility with a trading floor and electronic exchange.

Miami International Holdings, or Miax, said its new Miax Sapphire exchange will include a floor at 545 Wyn in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood, with physical trading expected to go live by the second half of 2024. While the derivatives action may be more like trading in Chicago than the stock exchange buying and selling of Wall Street, the move is symbolic of the shift in financial business toward Florida from New York.

Miami is now the second-largest international financial hub on the East Coast, and the city made its debut on the latest edition of the Global Financial Centres Index, ranking 24th globally and seventh nationally in the report compiled by the London-based think tank Z/Yen and the China Development Institute in Shenzhen.

The company said it will have the first national securities exchange to establish operations in Miami with a physical trading floor and electronic exchange. The Sapphire exchange is the company’s fourth national securities exchange for U.S. multilisted options.

The trading of the contracts that give the holder the right to buy or sell a specific asset at a specific price on or before a certain date will be overseen by a company that claims to be the world’s 14th largest derivatives exchange group. As of Dec. 6, its options exchanges account for about 16% of the U.S. market share, according to the company website’s live tracker.

To be clear, one trading floor doesn’t make a trading center. And physical trading, known in past decades for its jostling, yelling, hand signals and occasionally misread orders, has been challenged by electronic buying and selling.

The company has executed a lease for 38,400 square feet of space — the building’s entire ninth floor at the 10-story office facility in Miami’s Wynwood district, Andy Nybo, senior vice president and chief communications officer for Miami International confirmed to CoStar News in an emailed statement.

When built out, the space will include offices for Miami International employees and market participants, alongside conference facilities and broadcast media space. Miami International expects to build out the facility over the next year, Nybo said.

Miami’s Wynwood district has seen a development boom over the last few years driven by a growing population and company relocations, with developers rushing to build new offices, high-end condos and apartments in the trendy neighborhood. In addition to Miami International’s new exchange, other tenants at 545 Wyn include Sony Music and PwC.

The “dynamic neighborhood,” as Nybo described it, hosts companies including private equity firm Thoma Bravo at Mindspace Wynwood, Schonfield Strategic Advisor’s location at The Dorsey and one of WeWork’s most successful sites at Wynwood Garage.

These company relocations and expansions have bolstered the area’s office occupancy and maintained high rents — high-quality spaces in Wynwood command asking rents of $75 per square foot, second only to Brickell’s $84 per square foot three miles further south. Similar spaces across the wider market generally fetch around $60 per square foot, CoStar data shows.

“A number of factors influenced our decision to build a next-generation trading floor in Miami including the accommodative business environment, favorable tax environment and emergence as a global financial center,” Nybo told CoStar in his statement.

Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said in an earlier press release that the move reinforces the region’s status as a destination for the global financial industry, and that being “selected as the location for a regulated national securities exchange represents an important milestone” for Miami.

545 Wyn is located at 545 NW 26th St. and was completed in late 2020 by Chicago real estate development company Sterling Bay and capital partner Knickpoint Ventures. The propertycomes with 270,000 square feet of office space, 26,000 square feet of retail, as well as a 440-space parking garage.

Amenities include an on-site fitness center, 18,000-square-foot amenity floor with indoor and outdoor space, private tenant balconies, and an 8,000-square-foot pedestrian-only paseo park. Construction was financed by an $81 million construction loan from the Little Rock, Arkansas-headquartered Bank OZK.

While Miami International maintains an office at 1450 Brickell, the company’s national operations center is located in Princeton, New Jersey, at the West Windsor Commons business center at 7 Roszel Road. The company also has offices in Minneapolis; Chicagoand Hamilton, Bermuda.