NEIGHBORHOOD: South Beach

Lincoln Road still hasn't really gotten back to its old self since the halcyon before-Covid-times, when the Miami Beach pedestrian shopping street was eternally packed with people and retail rents were sky high.

They say a kitchen renovation can test any marriage, but apparently not for a former Detroit automotive CEO and his interior designer partner.

Sometimes a property arises that appears to be the absolute definition of obscenely luxurious decadence, to practically an irresponsible degree. That's one way to describe this rental that recently hit the market at 242 Washington Avenue for an absolutely lavish $21,000 a month, in the heart of South Beach's South-of-Fifth enclave.

When architectural critic and curator John Margolies took these photos in the early days of South Beach's art deco revival, from approximately 1980 to 1990, many thought it was a lost architectural cause, or perhaps not even worth the effort. But Margolies's photos document the raw beauty of South Beach's architecture at the time and are a stark comparison to what came later, as anybody who has seen what South Beach has become can immediately tell. These were the dark days of Miami Beach's art deco resurgence, but the light would soon come.

A rather psychedelic new gym designed by one of Miami's boldest young architects has just opened on Lincoln Road. Manuel Clavel Rojo of Clavel Arquitectos, perhaps best known locally for designing part of the surreal Museum Garage in the Design District (the section with the cars suspended off the side), has designed the brand-new Miami incarnation of Gymage, a Madrid-based gym and "lifestyle resort."

A unique single-family-house-cum-industrial-loft-esque listing in South Beach, just off Lincoln Road, which has bounced on and off the market since 2017, with successively lower and lower prices, is back, this time asking $2,250,000. That's only $250,000 more than the owner paid for the place, way back in 2013.

This first floor unit in a small residential building tucked away in the urban, dense, and rather jungly South-of-Fifth part of South Beach has a lot of the privacy-oriented benefits of a house while being part of a condo building. Yes, you have people living above and next to you, but with your own sidewalk-facing entrance and two private terraces, it doesn't really feel like it.

The Miami Beach Botanical Garden has just completed an expansion that extends along the Collins Canal for 350 feet, embracing an underutilized piece of land and expanding the garden to a full three acres. With a design by landscape architect Raymond Jungles, the expansion consists of a meandering path along the canal's southern edge, new gateways, and lush foliage. The new area will be able to be enjoyed by visitors "soon," says the garden, which is currently closed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Back in September, we reported that the Kimpton Hotel Palomar South Beach would open in late 2019. Well, guess what? 2019 has practically come and gone, and although construction at the hotel is on the home stretch, it still hasn't opened. The latest word from the hotel's publicist is that a tentative January 27th opening date has been set.

Officially called "Kimpton Hotel Palomar South Beach," the new hotel on the corner of Alton Road and the Collins Canal, overlooking Dade Boulevard in Miami Beach, has announced they are opening "late 2019" as construction workers hustle to finish the job. The hotel is hedging its bets, however, and only taking reservations for April 2020 and later.