Forget condo building. Like we said yesterday, this decade’s Miami building boom appears to be all about retail. Now come reports that developers are looking to build a major retail center in Brickell with big-box stores in the vein of the Midblock area of the Shops at Midtown Miami. According…
The condo boom was so last decade. In the 2010s it’s all about a retail boom in Miami. The Design District is being redeveloped into a glorified luxury outdoor shopping mall. A large development centered around a megamall is being planned for downtown. And now there are plans afoot to…
Overtown is one of Miami’s most historic, if blighted, neighborhoods. All it needs to change its fortunes is a Manhattan-ified name. Realtors are now declaring that the blocks within NE 14th Street and NW 20th Street, and NW First Avenue and NE Second Avenue — a square officially in the…
In what could have been a stupid idea but actually turned out pretty illuminating (especially from Florida’s point of view), Floating Sheep mapped each county in the United States by how often its residents tweet about beer compared with how often they tweet about church. Miami-Dade, unsurprisingly, came in strongly on…
The Dolphins’ Chad Ochocino may be a bit of an oddball, but you can’t say his heart isn’t in the right place. After receiving a Twitter message from a fan in Ohio who had recently lost her husband of 30 years, the wide receiver decided to invite her to his…
Have you been driving through downtown Miami lately, searching in vain for a parking spot that won’t cost you a hundred dollars for four hours, only to find yourself staring up through your windshield and thinking to yourself, “Are there a lot of new skyscrapers, or is it just me,”…
Has Raanan Katz never heard of the Streisand effect?The local real estate mogul and minority owner of the Miami Heat has sued a local blogger and Google to try and get an unflattering picture of himself removed from the Internet. Of course, that means now the picture will be seen…
There isn’t a home in America quite like the Versace mansion (otherwise known as Casa Casuarina and now the Villa by Barton G), and its astonishing price tag reflects its exquisiteness and notoriety. The historic mansion was just put on the market for $125 million, which ties it with a…
The two-and-a-half acre plot of grass and nothingness in the center of Midtown Miami has had a tumultuous history. Now only known as the “Green Space”, it was supposed to become a series of fancy gardens. That was scrapped in early 2011 after the high-falutin’ landscaper never got past the…
The “Taj Miami” is not exactly a regularly penthouse, as much as it is a unique glass mansion literally built atop a 40-story skyscraper in Brickell. The unique piece of Miami real estate is now back on the market and could be yours for just $4.2 million…
Less than six months after a penthouse at the Setai sold for $21.5 and set a new record for the highest price ever paid in Miami-Dade for an apartment, that record has been smashed. A penthouse in South Beach’s exclusive Continuum towers has been sold for $25 million according to…
Less than two years after Burger King was sold to private investors, another Miami-Dade-based national restaurant chain is going private. It was announced today that Angelo, Gordon & Co.’s Private Equity Group will pay $296 million for Benihana, Inc. and take the chain private…
For the first time, Facebook will put its stock up for public sale today. The company will instantly land at least $16 billion, pushing its value to well over $100 billion. Wunderkind CEO Mark Zuckerberg will be the obvious winner, but hundreds of other investors are also in line for…
2011 was a banner year for tourism in Miami-Dade as records were set not only for the number of tourists who stayed overnight in the county, but also for how much money they left behind. According to numbers released today by the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau 13.4 million…
The Miami economy got a shock today when the county’s largest private employer, the University of Miami, filed a notice that it plans to lay off 800 employees from its medical school. The move comes two weeks after university president Donna Shalala said the medical school was planning on cutting…
Thirty-three-year-old Pompano Beach resident Gasmy Joseph wears a supertall Mohawk. About a year ago, an epiphany struck when he wanted to spread the word about a buddy’s birthday party: Why not advertise it on the hairdo? In terms of innovation, Thomas Edison’s light bulb now looks like a piece of…
No longer can you count on finding a sweet deal on rent in one of those quickly filling-up high rises. 24/7 WallStreet reports that rents in Miami are skyrocketing. In fact, in the past year Miami saw the third highest rise in average rent of any major metro area, and…
When Alan Lara touched down in American Samoa, he was looking for a fresh start. Bluesky Communications, a subsidiary of Miami-based eLandia, had agreed to pay the Mexican engineer and his fiancée to move to the tiny U.S. territory from their home in Guatemala. But months later Lara was abruptly…
Last week, Riptide received a mysterious complaint from a Brazilian reader who had an intriguing allegation: Located in 2800 Biscayne Boulevard — the building that, until last year, housed Miami New Times office — a company called Leader Perfume was ripping off South American customers, he claimed.We decided to investigate…
Deep Throat, the pioneering 1972 porno film, was partially shot in various places throughout Miami-Dade, and now an infamous mansion that was the setting for two of the film’s most infamous scenes is for sale. It can be yours for the price of $1.75 million…
Like many small business owner on Florida, Paul Hodges has been struggling over the past few years. His Cocoa Beach motel, the Fawlty Towers, has seen its profits plummet. So, he’s come up with a new plan to jolt his bottom line. Starting tomorrow the Fawlty Towers will now be…
The Gordon Gekko of roundball is apparently downsizing. Slicked-back Miami Heat president and former coach Pat Riley and his wife Christine just sold their appropriately gaudy Coral Gables property. They bought the 180 Arvida Parkway mansion, which is 13,000 square feet on a two-acre beachfront peninsula, in 1996 for $6.3…
