This ‘starchitect’ is behind the majority of South Florida’s best new towers

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By Andrew Sessa

What’s in a name? When it comes to luxury high-rise residential real estate in Miami, the answer is more than $11,000 per square foot.

That’s what a 13,000-plus-square-foot penthouse is expected to ask when it hits the market for more than $150 million at the Raleigh, a storied Art Deco hotel currently being overhauled by developer Michael Shvo and will include a Rosewood Hotel and Residences. 

How can it ask so much? Well, in part because it’s designed by the world-famous architect and renowned leather daddy Peter Marino.

“In the Miami market, it’s a real stamp of credibility, of quality.”

Douglas Elliman broker Fredrik Eklund

So-called “starchitects” like Marino are behind a majority of Miami’s best new towers. It’s no wonder why. Just like caviar on your lobster roll, these high-flying, brand-name designers help developers upsell Mimi’s already top-dollar apartments.

“In the Miami market, it’s a real stamp of credibility, of quality,” said Douglas Elliman broker Fredrik Eklund, who’s working with the Shore Club, another Art Deco Miami Beach icon, this one reimagined by famed New York firm Robert A.M. Stern Architects (RAMSA) for the Witkoff Group and Monroe Capital. 

Owners who purchase units in these starchitect-designed buildings are “buying into a collection of properties that hold their value in any market. It affects pricing immensely,” Eklund added.

That certainly proved true for owners of homes in One Thousand Museum, the 62-story, Biscayne Boulevard tower that opened a few years back as one of the last projects designed by the late Zaha Hadid. Condos up for resale there have been fetching up to $2,100 per square foot (with one currently asking $2,700), well above the $1,740 per square foot being asked for a top unit in the neighboring, non-starchitect Marquis tower. Attaching a “name” architect to a project “really makes a significant difference,” confirmed Liz Hogan, a broker with Compass. “It’s a way to collect buyers and create confidence.” 

She points to another in-the-works RAMSA project, the St. Regis Residences in Brickell. There, she noted, “buyers didn’t have questions because they trusted the architect’s name. Some even bought without floorplans.”

So which architect has the richest name of them all? Below are five in-the-works Miami towers, all designed by the grandest of starchitects. We stacked them up against comparable non-starchitect buildings nearby to see how the price of their top units fared. 

Baccarat Miami, Brickell

The name: This 75-story, 355-unit development from the Related Group and GTIS Partners boasts design by Arquitectonica — arguably the South Florida firm with the most international cache, thanks to its early-1980s Atlantis condominium, whose cameo in the “Miami Vice” credits turned its palm-tree-punctured facade into an icon. Here, they’ve partnered with New York studio Meyer Davis for interiors and Swiss-born landscape architect Enzo Enea for the gardens. 

The price: The Baccarat’s almost 6,800-square-foot duplex penthouse is asking $21.7 million, which translates to about $3,200 per square foot. 

The competition: That’s almost 20% below the $3,950 being sought for a 5,798-square-foot penthouse asking $22.9 million at the nearby, 20-year-old Four Seasons Residences by Handel Architects.

The difference: $750 per square foot

Shore Club, South Beach

The name: Another iconic Art Deco hotel getting the luxury real estate treatment, this property will emerge from its RAMSA–designed reboot with a 75-room Auberge hotel in the original Shore Club structure. Also on property will be 49 private residences housed in a vintage 1939 building, plus a 20-story tower and a single-family Beach House, both newly built. 

The price: The developers are keeping mum on penthouse pricing, revealing only that they’re asking $6,250 a square foot for the $37.5 million, 6,000-square-foot Beach House.

The competition: That’s well above what the $4,179-per-square-foot penthouse at the nearby Setai is hoping to achieve. At the neighboring W, a $15.5 million penthouse is seeking $5,632 a square foot.

The difference: $618 over the W and $2,071 over the Setai.

The St. Regis Residences, Brickell

The name: This RAMSA tower, with interiors by David Rockwell, will rise 50 stories, offering residents of its 152 homes long views over Biscayne Bay, the Atlantic Ocean and the city. The Related Group and Integra Investments turned to Stern in part because of his firm’s proven track record delivering top quality and price victories for luxury real estate towers in Manhattan — not least at 15 Central Park West and 220 Central Park South, where a unit sold for $238 million, or nearly $10,000 per square foot.

The price: Integra cofounder and principal Nelson Stabile thinks the combination of Stern and St. Regis allows for a 35% pricing premium. But with the St. Regis’s 10,000-square-foot upper penthouse duplex asking $45 million, or $4,500 per square foot, developers are seeking only about 14% more than nearby penthouses.

The competition: That $3,950-a-square-foot penthouse at the Four Seasons mentioned above.

The difference: $550 per square foot.

The Perigon, Miami Beach

The name: For this 73-unit, 17-story tower, developers Mast Capital and Starwood Capital Group teamed Dutch arch-icon Rem Koolhaas’s OMA (known for his manifesto “Delirious New York”) with British interior designer Tara Bernerd. Gustafson Porter + Bowman, the landscape firm redoing the Eiffel Tower gardens before this summer’s Paris Olympics, will handle the greenery.

The price: The $6,500-per-square-foot, $37 million penthouse comes with nearly 6,500 square feet of outdoor living space in addition to the almost 5,700 inside. 

The competition: Compare that to other listings in the Perigon’s Mid Beach neighborhood, which top out for the most part around $2,000 a square foot, including condos at the Fontainebleau, which come furnished. (An outlier at the famed building is asking $3,790 — but it has been for over a year.)  

The difference: $4,500 per square foot.

The Raleigh, South Beach

The richest name: Celebrated for the curvaceous swimming pool in its courtyard, this legendary beachfront Art Deco hotel has developer SHVO to thank for its reimagining as a 3-acre luxury enclave designed by Peter Marino. When complete, it’ll feature a 55-room, five-villa Rosewood Hotel in two vintage buildings; a gourmet restaurant in another; a private club from Milan’s Langosteria on the beach; and 40 residences in a new 17-floor tower. 

The price: The top spot in the tower is that 13,000-plus-square-foot penthouse, which Shvo has said he’ll market for over $150 million, or roughly $11,000 a square foot. But even the starter units, priced at $10 million, go for almost $4,600 per square foot. 

The competition: That penthouse is stratospherically more than either of the top units at the Setai or W mentioned above.