Who came up with the idea of painting a gigantic bright green parabola on the building sides with accents of royal blue in the front and rear? This is horrible for the skyline! First off, we all have to look at it. Secondly, if you own at the Club, and would like to add dark wood or light marble floors to your unit, what do you do about the bright green wall outside in your terrace area? Nothing. What can you do except hate it? There goes any interior décor harmony. It’s even worse for those with partially painted green walls. This is all part of the parabola effect. As if painting the walls this painful color combination is not bad enough, they painted the steel railings too!
There is a much bigger problem with the color scheme: the bright green and blue will fade. The building is near the bay and salt air will diminish the color faster than if it were farther inland. This means that the condominium association will have to paint the building every couple of years. This is no minor cost. We’re talking a couple of hundred thousand dollars per instance. It all could have been avoided with lighter tones. This means that the condominium association will have to fund their reserves to allocate money for the expected repainting of the green parabola exterior. Funding the reserves, although prudent,
is not always done in order to reduce monthly maintenance assessments. The alternative means special assessing the unit owners for the funds—not a desirable option. In the case of The Club, the color of the exterior is so bright that if it faded, it would look too terrible to ignore. This means more maintenance and higher assessments for The Club’s unit owners.
Continuing on a negative note, the building’s parking garage is the biggest and nastiest that Brickell has seen in years. It exceeds the height of the neighboring building to the west. There was no effort to cover it, make it more attractive, or compact. Rather it is a blight spot in the beautiful Brickell skyline. For the nasty color scheme, impractical maintenance implications, blah design, and abhorrent parking garage, the Club is by far the most repulsive new building in Brickell. Congrats!
hole in the city. The storage yard deterred any interest in the entire area, helped diminish 
Easily, the most impressive of the Midtown phases is 2, due to its respectable height and unique aspects such as the Midrise portion which has an astounding glass encased multi-cube design. 4 Midtown is also impressive with its taller height and standout crown. Each project has the high-ceiling and open-space loft component featuring split levels. The Mews are those mixed use units at the foot of each building. The Midrise segment consists of those units located at the pedestal level, and the Tower units have lower ceiling heights but soar above all other units in distance from the ground. The Penthouse levels, as expected, are impressive with unique split level floor plans.
Miami’s skyline cannot be considered mature without a broad area of density. In the recent past, density was loosely centralized around the financial district in the CBD. Brickell had some decent pockets of density as well, but it was not continuous and connected to other pockets of density. Gradually, with so many new developments coming through, the gaps started closing, but in Uptown there were until recently, no pockets of density except the tiny Omni-Venetia enclave. With the construction of the PAC, several projects were announced along Edgewater, but this development was along the bay front away from Biscayne Blvd. and definitely not west of it. This meant that Uptown was emulating Brickell to the south; where density was mostly confined along the bay. This seemed to be the case until Midtown Miami was announced. Then there was a paradigm shift; Not only would there be inland development
in Uptown but the westward densification might exceed that of Brickell Village. This was a sudden change in possibilities. Brickell was an established neighborhood. Brickell had the name recognition and posh reputation. Uptown seemed an upstart. Uptown’s viability suddenly rested on Midtown Miami as much as the PAC to the south and smattering of Edgewater developments to the east. Midtown Miami became, arguably, Uptown’s most important urban pillar and therefore Miami’s too. It offered to be an anchor of stability and progress in the center of Uptown. Other development anchors such as the Design District and the PAC combined to develop a certain sense of hype and excitement about the upstart urban neighborhood.
Uptown is a new concept, not altogether established, and widely elaborated on in this blog. It is an important idea because it identifies an emerging urban powerhouse of a neighborhood in an area that was development starved for decades. In the next three years Uptown will grow faster in densification than Brickell and the CBD did in 15 years. The latter two saw steady rather uneventful climbs in development through the years. Currently, both are experiencing major new construction activity, and Uptown is lagging bit behind but still Uptown came from nowhere. Take Midtown Miami out of the Uptown equation and the entire area becomes hollow. A vast void is left in the center. Thankfully, that is not the case, and Midtown Miami will beat as a heart in the center of the rapidly booming urban neighborhood.
name national retailers setting up nearby. These national retail giants add an immediate economic viability to the former urban blackhole. The area’s landscaping is beautiful and refreshing. The streets are new and clean. The buildings have sharp, forward-thinking designs. They compose an array of the finest architectural designs from the drawing boards of architectural stars. The area, still mostly under construction and unoccupied, is already buzzing with activity. It feels like being in the past and peering into an exciting future. As the buildings gradually become fully occupied, new shops will continue to open, and traffic will flow through Midtown Blvd., you will see the boost in car and pedestrian traffic in the Design District. This will give the Design D istrict some much needed visibility and exposure not to mention help boost projects such as Cor and Aria. The two neighborhood’s , although different in character, will come to intermingle in activities and people. Craig Robins will surely capitalize off of the momentum in the Design District.
block urban neighborhood in the interior. The long and slender bay front neighborhood is bisected by 26 or so streets and is not exactly practical to traverse by car, bike, or foot. There is no avenue that runs through the entire neighborhood from north to south. This type of neighborhood lends itself better to residential use. The nearby Midtown Miami project, with its massive retail component, will undoubtedly ignite a retail wave in the area’s interior. This will provide the mostly residential 
There have been legitimate complaints regarding the developer. Legally, the developer is obliged to adhere to certain time constraints when it comes to construction and unit owners naturally expect for this to occur. When it does not, confidence in the developer and investment is shaken, plus the developer becomes vulnerable to litigation. It is not altogether clear as to how much the developer has transgressed in this regard, but certainly enough for outside observers to take notice. Negative rumblings regarding the Nirvana project is beginning to fuel some concern among Midtown investors. It is likely that Midtown investors will not lose sight that their role is an historic one. Midtown investors are the quintessential urban pioneers; setting foot in areas once blighted, now new; composing the social fabric that will emit the energy that will define this new and immensely important neighborhood. This should solidify their patience as it will bear fruit unlike any other. The massive scale of the Midtown project and need to attain government funding for necessary infrastructure might explain some of the delays. The reported lack of adequate communication between investors and the developer along with the sale of the majority of the project is feuling concerns, but this all fails to overshadow the project’s overall significance.