Report: Apple Chooses Coral Gables as Site of New Florida Office

Apple Inc. plans to open a roughly 45,000-square-foot office space in a Coral Gables tower, following in the footsteps of other tech giants that are setting up shop in the Miami area, Bloomberg reports.

The smartphone maker is poised to move into the Plaza Coral Gables, a newly constructed, mixed-use complex in the City Beautiful.

Apple reportedly has a lease for upper floors in the Plaza's north tower, one of two towers with expansive office space in the complex. Bisnow reported that the deal is one of the largest Miami-area commercial leases inked in early 2024.

The Plaza's asking rates for commercial space are pricey, a more than 30 percent premium relative to the surrounding Coral Gables-area rates, according to a Cushman & Wakefield report cited by Bisnow. Still, the listing prices for office space in the complex appear cheaper by a long shot as compared to high-end Brickell properties.

Apple, whose more than $96 billion in annual net income continued the company's streak as the most profitable firm in the U.S., is also planning to open a flagship 19,000-square-foot retail space in Miami Worldcenter.

The Miami area has experienced a wave of tech company investment and office leases in recent years, coinciding with a pandemic and post-pandemic influx of industry moguls, including PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel, Citadel chief Kenneth Griffin, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Bloomberg noted Amazon has been eyeing around 50,000 square feet of office space in the Miami area. The search could be galvanized by Bezos' recent move to Miami-Dade County, where he has been amassing residential property on the exclusive Biscayne Bay island of Indian Creek.

Microsoft, meanwhile, has a lease for office space in the soon-to-open 830 Brickell high-rise, a 55-floor building where high-profile tenants such as hedge fund Citadel and the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis have signed leases.

Among the large-scale tech company leases signed last year in Miami-Dade was Kaseya's 100,000-square-foot deal in the Wells Fargo Center. Kaseya, a network monitoring and IT company, holds the naming rights to the Miami Heat's arena.

Ultimate Kronos Group, a workforce management tech company, renewed a large-scale lease in Weston, expanding its headquarters in the process, TheRealDeal reported.

The recent evolution of the tech industry in Miami has had its share of growing pains.

The collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which held the Heat's arena naming rights before Kaseya, sent ripples through the Brickell financial district, where the company leased office space and planned to move its headquarters shortly before going bankrupt.

Coworking firm WeWork reportedly pulled out of a big lease at 830 Brickell in 2022, a year before WeWork declared bankruptcy.

Relative to the nationwide commercial office market, which has vacancy rates at historic highs, Miami appears on firmer ground, with an office space vacancy rate below ten percent, according to real estate firm Colliers.

Jonathan Kingsley, an executive at Colliers, told the TheRealDeal that large-scale lease activity in South Florida has recently slowed down, in keeping with the national trend, but that demand remains solid.

"Out-of-state companies say they want to be in Miami," Kingsley said. "As a result, demand has been pretty strong for Greater Miami."