Brickell City Center

When I first arrived and seen the aesthetics of Brickell City Center, the massive mixed use development occurring in the heart of downtown Miami, all I could think was, wow this must be a very expensive project.  I had seen many similar projects modeled in class projects and it was time to see one live and in progress.  Brickell City Center is composed of luxury office, residential, retail, and hotel space.  The nearly 5 million SF building will sit on 9 acres of land and have incredible architecture as well as landscaping out to the curb with no setbacks. Not your typical building in the heart of a metro city.  This development is said to be the bridge that will close the gap between architecture and landscaping of a building or site.

The cost of doing such a project could be very costly, when my group did our diligence on the Seattle WFD development for the MIT case, or property cost in the 100 millions range to complete.  Looking at this project I knew it had to be a lot more and in real dollars.  After finding out it cost 1.05 billion I was astonished.  Projects like these do not interest me at all.  It is hard enough to get in the door and find projects to work on but something like this for me is almost impossible.  However I do take note in everything I learn about, for instance the fact that this beautiful idea and creation of landscaping for the building only cost 1% of the total budget really stood out.  I always imagined that landscaping was expensive and took a lot of labor to complete.  Knowing that it can be done much cheaper and that local vegetation in projects is more feasible, I will be able to incorporate some of these ideas into developments in the future.

The idea of having retail, residential, office, and hotel all in one is something i have always thought about, but didn't think it could be done.  In my hometown several high rise buildings might have a couple of the classes but certainly not all.  This idea reminds me of building like the Trump Tower but on a completely different level.  Im sure it wont be long until developers across the country start implementing this idea into major cities.  I will be in line to buy my home when it happens in Chicago.