Urban Pioneer: Tony Goldman

In the urban spectrum, a visionary’s ability to transcend time and place–days, years, even decades–in a few short breaths, while standing on a city block, and visualize city life where scarcely any exists, value in the derelict, motion in the motionless, color in the bleak, culture in the air, is an exceedingly rare talent. To fully express and catalyze that vision, harness the forces of the city, and bring about change that delivers to it a new history, is miraculous, and, the daily occupation of Tony Goldman.

Miami’s Retail Feel: Legacy v. Destination

Legacy Stock Retail; H&M in Venice – Photographed January 2012

Sense of Place

Legacy buildings (known as the legacy stock) tend to be historic structures (usually with architectural value) that are preserved and adapted from their original use to a new one, more often than not, retail. As a result, legacy retail is more typically found in older cities and widely seen in Europe and U.S cities such as NYC and Chicago.

Miami’s legacy stock is limited on the mainland but rich on the Beach–where Art Deco architecture is abundant. Back on the mainland, the Dacra-propelled Design District has considerable legacy retail potential.

Brickell Means Business

Brickell World Center – Foram Group

Central Business District Shift

Downtown was once the undisputed central business district of Miami. It has always been taken for granted that the CBD (as urbanists like to call it) was where the Bank of America tower stood completely illuminated at night. Yet, increasingly, class A office development is emerging south of the river in upstart Brickell Village.

Downtown’s Tale of the Tape

Downtown, a jumble of 1940s and 50s era low rises with sporadic office high rises, remains, with the exception of Met Two, dormant in class A office development. One Bayfront Plaza seems a distant dream though I’m rooting for the Hollos. The development of the Marina Blue, 900 Biscayne, Ten Museum Park, Marquis, Loft I and II, Viscayne, 50 Biscayne, Wind, Ivy, and Metropolitan Miami are mostly high density residential. the pedestrianization of the area has been slow to come. Retail activity remains niche in the Jewelry District and the periphery possess an eclectic array of electronic, clothing, and accessory stores. Had Lynx, a major proposed Class A offering, been completed, momentum may have been tipped north of the river, but it, like so many other developments, never broke ground, and Brickell Village, with the class A additions of Brickell World Center, Latitude One, and 1450 Brickell towers, is where big business is headed.