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Churchill’s Pub Hits the Market; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Designing Sunny Isles Beach Condo Tower

By
Sean McCaughan
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The latest South Florida real estate news:

Feature image is The Residences of Bal Harbour, designed by SOM

Whimsical Selfie-Ready Seating Capsule Sculptures Coming To The Design District This Fall

By
Sean McCaughan
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Debuting in November, in time for this year’s incarnation of Art Basel Miami Beach, the Design District is getting a set of “larger-than-life seating capsules with colorful, shaggy surfaces,” a floating dome that looks like a disco ball, and “brightly hued wind chimes, hundreds of which will be hung like melody making ornaments,” all by Miami-based architect Germane Barnes.

Check out the press release:

THE MIAMI DESIGN DISTRICT NAMES GERMANE BARNES WINNER OF THE 2022 ANNUAL NEIGHBORHOOD COMMISSION

Barnes’ winning installation, Rock | Roll, is designed to celebrate the communities who shape Miami’s vibrant, one-of-a-kind culture

MIAMI, FL – (October 3, 2022) — Today the Miami Design District is pleased to announce that Germane Barnes has been awarded the 2022 Miami Design District Annual Neighborhood Commission. Following a competitive, invitation-only proposal process directed by curators Anava Projects, Miami Design District has selected the Miami-based architect’s concept, Rock | Roll, to be realized across the neighborhood’s public spaces, debuting in November for Miami Art Week and extending into the new year.  

The curatorial brief for the year, Something to Talk About, called for neighborhood-wide site-specific design interventions that spotlight Miami-centric stories while also enlivening visitors’ experience of the Miami Design District during its busiest season. In response, Barnes conceived Rock | Roll as a multifaceted, multi-scale installation that draws on the vibrant visual language of Miami Carnival to honor the BIPOC communities that have substantially contributed to Miami’s one-of-a-kind, polyethnic culture, from the city’s earliest foundations to today. 

For the neighborhood’s central pedestrian corridors, Barnes designed a series of whimsical, larger-than-life seating capsules that rock back-and-forth when activated by users and feature colorful, shaggy surfaces reminiscent of Carnival’s hallmark feathered costumes. With a nod to steel drums and the infectious joy of Soca music, Barnes has also designed brightly hued wind chimes, hundreds of which will be hung like melody-making ornaments in the lush native trees and palms planted throughout the neighborhood. 

Fabricated by ALT BLD, Rock | Roll includes an architectural-scale, free-floating dome that recalls a giant disco ball in both form and function. Suspended far overhead and animated by light and sound, the shiny, faceted structure will serve as a programmatic marker to an outdoor gathering space dedicated to sharing and enjoying community-driven storytelling. For the duration of the Rock | Roll installation, the space will host Carnival-inspired playlists as well as a talks series developed in collaboration with University of Miami’s Center for Global Black Studies and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami. Program to be announced.

Barnes notes: “I saw this project as an opportunity to celebrate the unique character of the city that has become my adopted home and the subject of much of my most prominent research. Rock | Roll is an ode to the joyful spirit that persists in Miami’s Black communities—a spirit of self-care that is so perfectly embodied in Miami Carnival culture. This city would not be what it is today without significant contributions from people who, on the one hand, look like me, and on the other reflect deep ties to places beyond Miami, especially the Caribbean and Latin America. The moral to the story is that there is space for everyone here.”

“We are proud to welcome Germane Barnes’ Rock|Roll to the neighborhood and spotlight this tremendous Miami talent making international waves,” says Craig Robins, President and CEO of Dacra. “Each year, our Annual Neighborhood Commission invites creative visionaries to harness the power of art, design, and culture to provide original, engaging experiences for all our guests. The imaginative, local focus of this year’s site-specific installation is going to be a lot of fun.”

According to curators Anava Projects, “One of the things we admire most about Germane and his practice—and there are many—is his community-engaged approach, which exemplifies the most exciting directions in the field at this moment. His work is at once accessible and poetic, critical and uplifting. We’re thrilled to be collaborating with him.”

The first Miami-based talent to be selected for the Miami Design District Neighborhood Commission since its launch in 2015, Barnes is a Chicago-born, University of Illinois- and Woodbury University-trained architect regarded for his propositional practice dedicated to mining the ways that race and architecture entwine, implicitly and explicitly, historically and today. Barnes’ recent prestigious honors include the Rome Prize in Architecture, the Harvard Wheelwright Prize, the Architectural League Prize, and an inaugural grant from Theaster Gates and Prada’s Dorchester Industries Experimental Design Lab. In addition to running his independent eponymous studio, Barnes is an Assistant Professor and the Director of The Community Housing & Identity Lab (CHIL) at the University of Miami School of Architecture. 

The Miami Design District is committed to enriching the neighborhood through cultural interventions that in turn support talented artists and creatives. Now in its eighth year, the Miami Design District’s Annual Design Commission is a family-friendly event intended to draw the community together. Past winners include: Studio Proba and Enjoy the Weather’s TomorrowLand (2021); gt2P’s Conscious Actions (2020); Fernando Laposse’s Pink Beasts (2019); Dozie Kanu’s Support System (2018); Charlap Hyman & Herrero’s White Rain (2017); Philippe Malouin’s The Speed of Light (2016); and Snarkitecture’s Holiday (2015).

Orlando’s Obnoxious “Versailles” Damaged by Hurricane Ian; More of Ian’s Central Florida Carnage

By
Sean McCaughan
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A roundup of the latest South (and in this case, Central) Florida real estate news:

Feature photo is the Ferris wheel in Downtown Miami

Explore Big Sugar’s Huge Private Railroad Through Florida’s Farmlands On The Meticulously Restored “Sugar Express”

By
Sean McCaughan
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Based in the rather odd little town of Clewiston, FL, the U.S. Sugar Corporation is the largest sugar cane producer in the country and the mack daddy of Florida’s massive sugar industry, known collectively as Big Sugar.

Bringing in their 92nd annual Florida sugar cane harvest this fall, the company has had a massive role in state politics and Everglades environmental protections (or lack thereof), for the past century of Florida’s history. Centered around Clewiston, sugar cane fields spread over hundreds of thousands of acres across the lower middle of the state, covering an area so huge that U.S. Sugar has always operated its own railroad to manage it all. And a few years ago they expanded from just transporting things like sugar cane to shuttling around pleasure-seeking tourists and nerdy railroading fans as well.

The South Central Florida Express, the official name of U.S. Sugar’s railroad, has always squired cargo trains of sugar farming-related things, sugar foodstuffs, and sugary leftovers, up and down an extensive network of 171 miles of track through sugar cane fields and along the southern perimeter of Lake Okeechobee. The system is so big, it’s officially the largest privately-owned agricultural railroad in the United States. The “cane trains,” as they are called, take freshly harvested sugarcane to the company’s gigantic refinery just south of Clewiston for processing, after which more trains take the resulting sugar-related products, like refined white sugar crystals and molasses, to interchanges on each end of the line where they will then head off throughout the United States and into grocery stores and ultimately into your food.

The new heritage railroad, called the Sugar Express, debuted here a few years ago with a 100-year-old steam engine that has its own storied Florida history. This locomotive began life on the Florida East Coast Railway’s Key West Extension, also known as the famed Overseas Railroad (where the Overseas Highway is now), and was later used by U.S. Sugar to haul “cane trains” in the middle of the 20th century. Fully restored and used for tours, events, and special outings like a Polar Express-themed excursion for Christmas, that single heritage train has since expanded in size and scope, with an impressive collection of historic railcars, including a dining car, an open-air car, a former Pennsylvania Railroad lounge car, another steam locomotive that had been on display outside Jacksonville’s historic downtown train station since 1960, an entire turntable formerly used by the Wabash Railroad in St. Louis Missouri, which will now be used in Clewiston, and more.

Over the past few years, as the world tackled a pandemic and U.S. Sugar continued to restore its historic locomotives, railroad cars, and old pieces of infrastructure (like the turn table), and wider public ridership interest grows, events happened here and there. For the 2022-2023 winter season, they just announced a “Start of Harvest” train on October 1st, which will be a day-long excursion to Lake Placid, FL, including a two-hour stop in the quaint little town, for $148 per person, and a much more elaborate and extensive three-day tour of the entire SCFE railroad in January, for an appropriately sizable $400 per person.

Publicity photos of the Sugar Express via U.S. Sugar

Shorty’s Barbecue, A Miami Institution, Will Be Built Over by Two Giant Towers

By
Sean McCaughan
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Welp, the legendary Shorty’s Barbecue, which has occupied its prime location on US-1 for 70 years, adjacent to the Dadeland South Metrorail Station, is being replaced by two gigantic transit-oriented towers. The restaurant’s owners sold off the site early this year, and the developers have just submitted their proposed plans for county approval. And boy, the new stuff will look nothing like the down-home, eclectic, laid-back restaurant that’s there today. Everyone involved, including the developers and the restaurant’s owners, promises that the iconic country-style barbecue joint will live on in the project’s commercial space. Although a lease has already been signed to that effect, ensuring its survival, as we’ve seen from many other old-school and well-loved Miami spots that are no longer here, such as Scotty’s Landing, Tobacco Road, and others, in reality, that survival is far from assured.

According to FL Yimby: “Designed by Coral Gables-based Corwil Architects, with Witkin Hults + Partners as the landscape architect, plans call for two connected mixed-use towers of 20 and 25 stories that would collectively yield 780,703 square feet of space, including 500 multifamily residential units, 4,851 square feet of ground floor retail, and 668 parking spaces. The towers would rise 318 and 280 feet and would be connected by a bridge designed to provide a free flow of light and air from east to west.”


Feature Image: Photo of Shorty’s Barbecue by Phillip Pessar.

The Long Delayed Amtrak Miami International Airport Linkage; Lil Wayne Lists His Big Beach House, And More

By
Sean McCaughan
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And now, a Thursday morning South Florida real estate news roundup while we watch Hurricane Ian huff and puff its way north:

Featured image: Abandoned beach hut-style cabanas at Historic Virginia Key Beach.

A Drop-Dead Spectacular South Beach Art Deco Villa Sold Earlier This Year For $7 Million

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

Michael Chetcuti and Kyle Evans (of Kyle Evans Design, because of course he has his own firm) spent six years turning what was left of a historic Streamline Moderne Art Deco house in South Beach’s Flamingo Park neighborhood (and not much was left, seriously) into a house so spectacular that their neighbors must just hate their guts. From jealousy. The duo only lived in the completed house for a couple of years before apparently getting bored, plopping it back on the market in March, and selling it in two months for a cool seven million dollars, because, as they casually told the Miami Herald, “we love a good project.” Oy vey. Well, at least It’ll be exciting to see what kind of architectural fantasia they whip up next.

Oh, and it got a write-up in the Wall Street Journal, because of course it did.

A New Name For the Underdeck; The Chateaux of SW Ranches

By
Sean McCaughan
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And now, the daily real estate news roundup:

Competition Asks Us To Imagine What Floating Affordable Housing in Biscayne Bay Might Look Like

By
Sean McCaughan
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0

An architectural ideas competition is looking for proposals that explore the idea of floating affordable housing in Biscayne Bay, to address the dual issues of climate change and housing affordability in South Florida. The competition brief overlooks the many complications that would make something like this extremely difficult if not impossible to build, not the least of which is environmental concerns, but focusing on these main problems it hopes to find some innovative solutions.

Put together by the organization Arch Out Loud, and judged by an impressive list of local and international jurors, the competition asks the question: “How can we design solutions that not only create affordable housing but also make it resilient to the looming problem of sea-level rise?” This is in response to changes happening that are leading to climate gentrification in the surrounding neighborhoods of Little Haiti, Little River, and the Upper East Side.

“The recent development and revitalization of the neighborhoods brings about its own underlying uncertainties: will longtime residents be able to find affordable housing near their current homes and communities? And, if so, how can they protect themselves from the risk of being displaced again due to sea level rise?” asks Arch Out Loud.

The site itself is a parallelogram of Biscayne Bay between the American Legion Park and Legion Picnic Island. Program requirements leave much of the decision-making to the imagination of competition entrants, with the only major requirements being that there be a minimum of 45 units of affordable housing and that each unit comes with its own boat slip, perhaps suggesting they see Miami as one day being so inundated by the ocean that even the poorest among us will have to own a boat to get around. Oh, and although the rules don’t seem to explicitly say the housing has to float, it’s called “Floating Housing” enough on the website that this is pretty clearly what they want. Considering most of the bay bottom is actually quite shallow, this could be a bit of an issue.

Although the early submission deadline has already passed, teams still have a few months to get their design submissions in for a slightly higher fee.

Featured image via Flickr/R. Maas. Aerial view of site via Arch Out Loud.

Brightline Is Increasing Tests on Orlando Route; The Miami Grand Prix Was A Massive Success

By
Sean McCaughan
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South Florida real estate news from around the web:

Feature image is a rendering of the lobby at the planned Baccarat Residences.

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