Construction is proceeding rapidly at Miami Worldcenter, the $2.7 billion mixed-use megaproject that will finally fill the blighted gap between downtown Miami and the Omni area directly to the north. Spearheaded and master planned by developers Nitin Motwani and Art Falcone, various elements of Miami Worldcenter are being built either by them or other developers, and the first part of the massive development will be completed before the end of the year.

Paramount Miami Worldcenter

The 27 acre project will include multiple residential towers, at least one office building, hotels, retail, and pedestrian-oriented public spaces. Approximately 140,000 square feet of retail is currently under construction at Miami Worldcenter, predominantly in the parking decks of the Caoba apartment building and Paramount Miami Worldcenter, a luxury condominium tower above an outdoor shopping mall. An additional 160,000 square feet of retail is planned at the project.

Beyond Worldcenter, the entire neighborhood is booming with new construction, as it quickly becomes the latest extension of Downtown Miami. Other notable projects nearby, including the Brightline’s MiamiCentral station, and starchitect Zaha Hadid’s One Thousand Museum, are making it a neighborhood to watch.

One Thousand Museum

Most recently, a Citizen M Hotel was announced. It will be a 348-room, 12-story hotel along NE Second Avenue between Seventh and Eighth Streets. The hotel will be along Worldcenter’s pedestrian open-air shopping promenade. Gensler is the architect of the 128,000-square-foot building which will include nearly 2,000 square feet of co-working/creative meeting spaces. This will be the third Citizen M hotel in Miami-Dade, and the groundbreaking date has not yet been announced.

Citizen M Hotel

Meanwhile, Worldcenter’s flagship development, Paramount Miami Worldcenter just topped off. This luxury condominium tower is 700 feet tall, with 60 stories, and 569 luxury units. The project is noteworthy for its extensive amenities list, including an outdoor soccer field, two tennis courts, a boxing studio, golf simulator, indoor basketball court, rooftop observatory, game room, and 26 for-sale poolside cabanas, among many other features. One of the latest amenities to be announced is a 5,000 square foot residential ‘skyport’ for flying cars. It will sit atop a pedestrian shopping mall. Paramount is being built atop an outdoor pedestrian shopping mall which will be the retail heart of the project.

Paramount Miami Worldcenter

Meanwhile, MDM Group’s massive Marriott Marquis Miami Worldcenter hotel and convention center, adjacent to the Brightline station on the western edge Worldcenter, is breaking ground before the end of the year. It will have 1,700 hotel rooms, 500,000 square feet of meeting and exhibition space, and another 350-room boutique hotel.

The first part of Miami Worldcenter to be completed will be a rental apartment building, the Caoba Apartments. The 444-unit project, developed by CIM Group and the Falcone Group topped off earlier this year, and should be completed before the end of the year. “Miami Worldcenter’s master plan has been in the making for more than a decade, and we’re only months away from our first tower opening its doors,” Nitin Motwani told the SFBJ earlier this year. “From this point forward, we’re going to see a steady stream of project elements delivering to market – residential, retail, office and hotel – as our vision for a ‘city within a city’ in Downtown Miami becomes reality.”

Caoba is only the first of multiple residential apartment towers coming to Miami Worldcenter. Developer ZOM is hoping to break ground on a 434-unit, 40-story apartment tower called Luma at Miami Worldcenter by the end of this year, with a planned completion date of 2020.

Hines, another developer, is planning to break ground on a more than 500,000-square-foot office building at Miami Worldcenter in 2019, which will be the largest office building developed in Miami since 2010. It’s also downtown Miami’s first new office tower in six years and will cater to increasing demand for office space in the urban core. In May, the Miami Herald announced construction would begin by the second quarter of this year. 45 stories tall, it will be located at 110 NE 10th St.

Miami Worldcenter Office building

The diamond-patterned facade, known as a diagrid structure, looks faintly like the Hearst Tower in New York. The architecture firm of Pickard Chilton Associates, from New Haven, Connecticut, won a competition to design the building. It will feature a gym, common work spaces, and even a separate elevator for employees to bring their pets to work.