Fouquet’s Hotel and Residences Miami Edges Toward Groundbreaking as Permits and Plans Stack Up
Fouquet’s Hotel and Residences Miami is edging closer to its first shovel in the ground. The development team has filed a string of permits in recent months, setting the stage for demolition and the start of construction within the next few months. The paperwork lands as sales are going well: the project has reportedly pulled in millions in presales, and the developer has just unveiled the first look at its amenity spaces, designed by RDAI, the studio behind Hermès. The site sits at 3995 N Miami Avenue and 39 NE 39th Street, and the team behind it is a crowded one. The project is a joint venture among Constellation Hotels Holding, Raycliff Capital, Miami Design District Associates, and Fort Partners. Miami Design District Associates is itself a partnership of Dacra, L Catterton Real Estate, and Brookfield Properties. The group paid roughly $170 million for the properties in late 2022. The filings cover several fronts. Multiple demolition permits would clear more than a dozen low-rise buildings that currently house leisure, office, and retail uses, among others. Beyond demolition, the developer has also submitted a phased vertical construction permit, a site work permit for foundation prep, and a master construction permit. All three are still waiting on approvals before work can proceed. The permits name Mobius Construction Inc. as general contractor, and they track closely with the UDRB submissions filed earlier this year. Those plans call for 143 units, 85 hotel rooms, and 20 condo-hotel units, plus more than 50,000 square feet of ground-floor retail and 178 parking spaces on a basement level for hotel guests and residents. Condo pricing starts at $1.8 million, and the unit mix runs from one to four bedrooms, topped by penthouses. Residents will have plenty to do without leaving the building. RDAI, a Paris-based firm, has led the design for the complex’s amenity spaces, which covers more than 40,000 square feet. Highlights include a rooftop pool with a bar, a rooftop lounge, a spa with a hammam and cold plunge, a Serenity Lounge with a juice bar, an on-demand salon, a fitness center with a private training studio, a golf simulator, an entertaining suite, an executive lounge, and a playroom, with more to come. The project is targeting completion in 2030. Not every approval is in hand yet, but the pace so far, from announcement to presales to permitting, suggests that date is realistic. When it does arrive, Fouquet’s will be the Design District’s first high-rise of this scale, with towers of 12 and 24 floors, rising 185 and 309 feet respectively.
Magic City Innovation District Plans Its Next Act: Two Rental Towers and 553 Units Along NE 60th Street
Magic City Innovation District, the nearly 18-acre mixed-use highrise development planned for Little Haiti, has unveiled its latest addition: two new residential towers. It is the third proposal for the sprawling project in recent years, arriving on the heels of a planned office tower and a residential tower, neither of which has broken ground. The latest plans are headed to Miami’s Urban Development Board for review this week, and if approvals and construction proceed as hoped, the towers would be built in two phases. The towers would sit on a combined 1.8-acre site at 225 NE 60th Street and 275 NE 60th Street, rising 25 and 20 stories, respectively. Both would bring high-end residences and ground-floor retail to the district. Plaza Equity Partners and Bob Zangrillo’s Dragon Global are leading the effort, and they have enlisted Arquitectonica to design the pair. According to the plans recently filed, the towers would hold 553 units between them: 267 in the 25-story building and 286 in the 20-story one. The mix runs from studios to three-bedrooms, with one- and two-bedroom layouts in between. The application states that every unit will be offered as a rental, which means the developers would not have to sit through a lengthy presales and marketing campaign before breaking ground. The developer has yet to name the amenities, but preliminary drawings offer a reasonable sketch of what is coming. They show multiple pools, outdoor terraces, lounge areas and a barbecue space, along with the other standard fare of a luxury rental building. At street level, the towers would share 24,387 square feet of retail, accessible from both NE 6th Street and a new pedestrian corridor called Les Bureaux Promenade. Lined with public art, seating, generous sidewalks and plenty of greenery, the promenade is meant to be the heart of the development, a spine running across the entire district and linking it to towers that have yet to be announced. To meet demand for parking, the towers would share one level of basement parking and a connected podium, delivering 718 spaces spread across multiple levels. Arquitectonica has built the design around sharp, rectangular forms. Interlocking volumes stack and shift across the facade, each traced in white frames that give the buildings a bold, graphic profile. The podium is wrapped in corrugated metal mesh and living green walls, a pairing intended to soften its presence on the street. The towers themselves are clad mainly in stucco, with floor-to-ceiling windows and glass balconies. “The tower’s massing is composed of interlocking rectangular volumes that establish a restrained, abstract composition,” Arquitectonica said. In contrast to the podium’s expressive geometry and material character, the firm said, the tower “emphasizes monumental, minimalist orthogonal lines.” Though nothing has been built, the project has drawn controversy since it was first conceived more than a decade ago, driven largely by fears of gentrification. To address those concerns, the city and the development team agreed years ago to create the Little Haiti Revitalization Trust. Under that agreement, the developers pledged $31 million in cash payments over 30 years to a newly established municipal agency and trust devoted to neighborhood investment, small business funding and affordable housing. With fresh investment and renewed momentum, the project appears to be moving forward, and a groundbreaking could come soon.