A Miami developer recently completed assembling land for Smart Brickell, a mixed-use hotel and residential project planned for the west Brickell neighborhood.
Habitat Development, led by principal Santiago Vanegas, paid a combined $21.6 million for the 1.23-acre development site on Southwest Ninth Street between Second and Third avenues in Miami, he told The Real Deal. Alfonso Jaramillo of Fortune International Realty and Javier Motta of Habitat Realty represented Habitat. Assembling and closing on the land took about a year-and-a-half and included seven parcels zoned T6-24, which allows for 200 residential units or 400 hotel rooms per acre.
Smart Brickell plans to have three towers, each with a 50-room hotel, two with 50 condos and one tower with 70 condos. The eighth floor would have an amenity deck with a pool that would be shared by all three towers. Habitat will submit its plans to the city of Miami for approval this month, Vanegas said.
The developer is gearing the project toward young professionals and investors, he said. Marketing materials include the option to rent units on Airbnb, for example. Unit prices range from about $280,000 to $390,000.
Habitat has about 30 reservations for units in the first tower and plans to break ground during the second quarter of next year with a delivery date of the end of 2019 or beginning of 2020. The estimated sellout, which includes valuing the hotel sales at $50 million, totals about $120 million.
Vanegas said the project will cost about $90 million to develop. Habitat will put in about 30 percent, or $24 million. His firm hired Gensler to design the facade, Arquitectonica to design the buildings and Hernando Carrillo as the architect of record.
Investors are heading west from Brickell’s core. Earlier this week, Zom closed on the land and a $52 million construction loan for a 24-story, mixed-use apartment building on Southwest Second Avenue and Southwest 12th Street.
The Smart Brickell project isn’t the first in Miami for Habitat. An affiliate of the developer sold the Miami River Inn to Avra Jain about two years ago for $8.6 million, and the company also built Habitat Residence Miami, a condo hotel, at 1700 Southwest Second Avenue.