Miami's Waldorf Astoria residential tower, poised to be south Florida's tallest skyscraper, is a test case for new techniques meant to enable the more than 1,000-ft.-tall building to withstand hurricane-force winds and remain stable near sea level.
Developers broke ground on the structure's foundation in downtown Miami in October, the Wall Street Journal reported. The 100-story tower, which resembles a series of glass cubes stacked on top of each other, will feature 205 hotel guest rooms and 360 luxury condominium residences.
It would be the city's first supertall structure, and the tallest residential building south of New York City when completed around 2027, according to the development team.
The consortium is headed by Property Markets Group (PMG), a worldwide developer of large-scale projects with offices in Miami and New York. Its partners include Greybrook, Mohari Hospitality, S2 Development and Hilton.
John Moriarty & Associates, the general contractor, has offices in Massachusetts, Northern Virginia, North Carolina and South Florida.
According to a news release from PMG, the Miami Waldorf Astoria's condos are about 87 percent presold.
When complete, the new building will surpass Miami's current tallest tower — the Panorama — which is nearly 900 ft. tall. Other developers, including Swire Properties and Related Companies, as well as Michael Stern's JDS Development, also plan supertalls in the city's Brickell area.
Project Promises to Be Challenging
Construction of the 1,049-ft.-high tower at 300 Biscayne Boulevard is now under way, according to The Real Deal, a South Florida real estate news site. It added, though, that the project promises to be one of the most challenging developments in the city's history.
Among the hurdles that the developers had to overcome is securing Miami International Airport's blessing because the building will be in the airport's flight path. That process took several years, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The Waldorf Astoria building also will require a tuned mass damper that acts like a pendulum to keep the building from swaying in the wind. It will be the first building in Miami to have one.
Like other recent projects that include Una Residences in Brickell and Brickell City Centre, the Waldorf Astoria project will have a foundation built using deep soil mixing. That process could take a year, PMG's Kevin Maloney told the Journal.
In addition, the building's size and weight will hold it down during hurricane strength winds, Maloney said. At Una, construction breached the water table and caused temporary flooding on that site, which concerned neighboring residents and owners, and paused construction.
Pricey Units May Offset Rising Insurance Costs
The cost of insurance has shot up 300 percent over the last 18 months, Maloney explained to the Journal, which will be one of the factors limiting how many projects end up being built in south Florida. At the Waldorf, he said the financing the developers secured, and their preconstruction sales, will cover the increased expense. Insurance and construction costs figure to continue rising, however, especially in the wake of Hurricane Ian.
Residential sales for the supertall structure began in March 2021 with unit prices beginning at about $1 million, but prices have increased since then, The Real Deal reported.
PMG, led by Maloney, announced in 2018 that Hilton's Waldorf Astoria brand would occupy the planned supertall, but the project had been in the works for years prior to that. The development company bought the property for $80 million in 2014, and built X Miami, a rental tower, next to the site.
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