In the heart of New Port Richey, FL's quaint little downtown, a historic hotel built in the 1920s in the Spanish Mediterranean style has been renovated and reopened. On the west coast of Florida, north of St. Petersberg, the Hacienda Hotel survived the recent Hurricane Ian largely unscathed.
Built in 1924, this historic Tudor Revival family home in Miami's Shorecrest survived almost a hundred years of people moving in and out, neighborhood highs and neighborhood lows, renovations, new kitchens, changing tastes, and whatever the '70s threw at it, always being the kind of house that everyone always says has "charm." Designed to be an old English fantasy that you lived in, it would have had interiors that evoked ye old past just as seductively as its exteriors still do.
Often called the most beautiful horse race track in the world, Miami's Hialeah Park has had a long and storied history. Famous for its setting, its prestigious races, the many famous horses that won there, and of course the flock of bright pink flamingos that nested in its infield, Hialeah Park was, and still is a legend. Opening for thoroughbred horse racing in 1925, Hialeah Park by now is almost one hundred years old. A faded grand dame that no longer holds thoroughbred racing, but stays alive as much as it can through its newer casino, Hialeah's track, grandstands, clubhouse, and paddock areas all still exist and could easily be brought back to their glory days. Hialeah really comes alive, however, in many vintage newsreels recorded there, some of which are still available online.
An adorably ancient coral rock house and accompanying guest cottage on Coconut Grove's Oak Avenue, at numbers 3041 and 3041 1/2 practically spitting distance from Main Highway, is the kind of property that could only ever exist in the Grove. Oozing old grove salty sailor vibes from between every stone, the house is historically designated by the City of Miami, making it most certainly not the kind of place one would or even could buy just for the land and "location, location, location" investment potential.
In April the owners of the Mai-Kai, the iconic and now-shuttered polynesian themed restaurant in Broward County, unveiled their grand plans to the City of Oakland Park and neighborhood residents for the property, including an enhanced entrance experience and banquet hall, along with necessary repairs to the roof and air conditioning systems, a new kitchen, and restoration of the main dining rooms. A part of the 65-year-old building's roof caved in back in October of 2020, leading to the closure of the Mai-Kai and questions as to the venue's future - a future that is increasingly looking to be in safe hands.
The quaint cottage at 3564 Avocado Ave, in the heart of the South Grove, combines a home originally built in 1936, replete with brick walls, a blue front door, Pecky Cypress paneling, and a gabled roof, along with a breezier section with sliding glass doors and a beamed ceiling that may have been added a few decades later to open out to the pool. Containing four bedrooms and four baths in just under 3,000 square feet, the house feels like a charming melange of old-Miami charm from a few different eras, with a huge price tag that seems appropriate for the maniacal post-pandemic housing market of today. Newly listed at $3.5M, the owners are asking more than twice what the house went for merely four years ago. Check out the photos, below.
Just a few months ago, this 10,000 square foot Palm Beach estate on a sweeping piece of property facing Lake Worth sold for a whopping $55 million, which any sane person might think was an impressive enough price tag, after having been on the market for about five months. But this is how over-the-top the current real estate market is. The house appears to have been almost immediately whallopped back onto the market, with a new listing price of $79 million. If that brash of a flip isn't proof we live in truly bizarre real estate times, than what is?
When the exquisitely wealthy businesswoman and philanthropist Adrienne Arsht listed her magnificent and massive Miami estate for sale in January, spectacularly priced at $150 million, it was a news item significant enough to command splashy spreads on the covers of the Miami Herald and the Wall Street Journal's Mansion section. To put it mildly, it was a major, major news item, not just because it could set a new record for the most expensive residential sale in South Florida, but because of the size, prominence, and history of the property itself.
With just over one acre of land on South Bayshore Drive, the rambling estate of John T. Peacock, a member of Coconut Grove's founding Peacock family, this 111-year-old historic pile is on an unusually large piece of land for a property in the heart of the Grove. Overlooking Kennedy Park, and an old sheltered inlet that practically ends at its front gate, the listing is asking for a healthy $12.9 million.
