36-Story The Helm Planned In The Design District

·47 Comments

Plans have been announced for a $500m mixed-use tower in the Design District called The Helm

A much shorter office tower had been announced as being planned for the same property in 2022.

Now, the building will be much taller and include residential units, thanks to Florida’s new Live Local Act.

The Helm is planned to rise 36 stories and include:

  • 162 branded residences
  • 116 income-restricted Live Local rental apartments
  • 83,338 square feet of office space
  • 48,111 square feet of retail and dining
  • 620 onsite parking space

Massing of the new building will be oriented towards the Brightline tracks and an upcoming Northeast Corridor train station.

The building is being designed by Cube3.

Helm Equities is the developer.

 

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Build Miami
11 days ago

To achieve affordable housing, Miami should upzone residential districts with decaying inventory near the urban core in places like West Buena Vista (west of N. Miami Ave) and Little Havana to allow row housing with a few stories where elevators and mass parking aren’t required. This would dramatically reduce HOA’s and the special assessments killing condos in Miami. It would pave the way for cheaper rents and make home ownership more attainable/affordable. It also doesn’t require to make every urban neighborhood like Brickell or Edgewater and makes Miami more dynamic in its urban neighborhoods. Just a thought

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anonymous
11 days ago

there are plenty of zoned duplex areas in city of Miami that could be upzoned so that you can raise the height and go from only having 2 units to 6 with parking underneath. This would also be good to help with flooding issues in the city if you can raise things up

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Lamont D Sanford
10 days ago

If for rentals, a Fourplex is considered a residential property for zoning and for financing.
Any buildings over 4 units is considered a commercial building.
It doesn’t make a lot of sense to build 6 unit buildings. Build 4 or anything over 12 is what works as a practical matter.

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Lamont D Sanford
10 days ago

That thought has been thunk a couple of decades ago, and no upzoning was required.

Properties on a Class A transit corridor can waive parking requirements, room count and room size minimums among other blockers. This has led to many new townhouse and small apartment developments, especially in Little Havana.

Practically speaking, putting 6 apts on land that used to have 1 dwelling unit helps a little, but will not make any dramatic difference.

The property above will add a good number of new units where they did not exist before, and these properties adding hundreds to the housing inventory will do far more to help then row houses, SFRs, or townhouses, no matter how aesthetically pleasing these housing types are.

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LongMIA
10 days ago

In other words, at least re Buena Vista West, extend Wynwood Norte zoning further north along the NW 2nd Ave corridor. I would fully support that.

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Anon
10 days ago

Exactly, makes so much sense. Hopefully the small scale projects pick up in Wynwood Norte. I like how affordable the HOAs are there. It makes buying more easy and it’s more charming than walking around a neighborhood with giant parking podiums.

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DroppingFacts
11 days ago

Glad to see more workforce units being built.

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Anonymous
11 days ago

To be fair, one of the better looking LLA developments when compared to the junk proposed in Wynwood.

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Build Miami
11 days ago

That’s not saying much!

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Cover the Podiums
11 days ago

This lot is absolutely massive and yet they still chose to not add liner units. Which proves my point that its not only land constraints that lead to exposed parking garages, but greed from the developers

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Lamont D Sanford
10 days ago

You are correct, but you do not know why you are correct.

Go talk to a serious engineer about what happens when you connect residential dwelling units to an automobile parking garage. They will provide you great information about how cars vibrate concrete structures and how the fit and finish of cabinetry and everything else does not work well with daily vibrations.

Liner units are not easy, and have to be separated, and it costs a lot of money. A Developer’s proforma is always going to have his profit numbers which are competitive with other developers as they seek capital.

IF the cost of liner units adds to the COST of the project, then the add to the COST of the project equally. The amount of profit does not change much.

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Cover the Podiums
10 days ago

Lucky for you I’m actually an engineer. Although I’m not involved directly in building design, I have done plenty of research on this topic. I also know people that live in liner units and been inside those units.

The vibrations you are talking about are extremely minimal, especially when compared to the floors above the parking garage. Why? because its all one concrete shell, so its essentially one big piece of concrete. The vibrations travel in all directions. So if your argument is to avoid liner units due to vibrations, then you should avoid building units above a parking garage. Which is like 95% of buildings being built in Miami. So yes go talk to an engineer and he will tell you its actually not an issue.

Thankfully like you mentioned, liner units can be separated from the garage by at least 1 foot, which is actually preferred to allow for parking garage ventilation from car fumes.

Not sure I understand your part about cost and profit. Adding liner units obviously drives down profitability, that’s common sense. They don’t make sense most of the time. But if it was required like it is in a lot of other cities, they developers would just bite the bullet. Adding liner units would drive margin by a very small amount. For example, instead of making 39% profit margin, it would be 37%. I know project managers for such buildings, and those numbers are pretty accurate. I understand developers are in the business of making money, but they wouldn’t go broke adding liner units. The truth is they just want to make as much money as humanly possible at the expense of a city’s architectural significance.

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Fern
10 days ago

The Live Local Act is probably one of the best pieces of housing legislation in the country in recent years. Other states would do well to copy it wholesale

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MKW
10 days ago

The crushing vehicular congestion in the area of 36th at both Biscayne and 2nd is about to get exponentially worse. I’m all for growth, but something has got to give with the traffic. The 5 year delay in the NE Corridor commuter rail service will exacerbate this problem. Why Miami cannot create a decent transit system is beyond me.

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SoBeMom
10 days ago

What are the expected prices for the income-restricted Live Local rental apartments?

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Roll Back Live Local Act
11 days ago

Live Local is going to kill the character of all Miami’s neighborhoods. The appeal of places like the Design District, Wynwood, the Art Deco District in Miami Beach is that they invoke charm and aren’t a collection of giant boxes on top of parking podiums.

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Cover the Podiums
11 days ago

I agree. Its mostly the height that I have an issue with. You can’t simply allow for any height in any neighborhood just because within 1 mile of a skyscraper

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Andy Spades
11 days ago

The noise and smoke for the trains is too much is you live below a 10th floor there. All trains are diesel and loud. They blare the loudest horns at each intersection. Anything near this must face the other way or be super tall.

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Anon
10 days ago

I lived on the 25th floor in Brickell and it was never quiet. Height ain’t gonna help

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Fern
10 days ago

The state should help fund some grade separations for the FEC. When the new commuter rail starts running it’ll be 80-90 trains a day on those tracks. The traffic disruptions from the gates being down alone will be massive, not to mention the crashes

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Lamont D Sanford
10 days ago

Very rarely do developers max out heights, especially when building according to the Live Local rules and programs.
The main benefits are the provisions to speed up approvals, cut through months of red tape, lock in property value assessments as long as housing is provided for workforce/affordable tenants/owners.

The project above will be a net benefit to the Design District. Kudos to the developers.

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Anon
11 days ago

Well thats what happens you don’t vote for increased density / to build housing. The result is a kneejerk reaction.

Obsessive adherence to single family homes is what led to this.

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Anonymous
11 days ago

What was I supposed to vote for?

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Anon
11 days ago

Increased density. Townhomes. Apartment complexes. Reduced parking minimums.

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Anonymous
11 days ago

What measure? Yeah of course I’d vote for that. Election cycle? County wide, city wide? Never heard of what you’re talking about that though

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Fern
10 days ago

Politicians don’t run on these things even though they’re massively important. It’s shameful

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Lamont D Sanford
10 days ago

Live Local was no knee jerk reaction.
While v1 wasn’t perfect, it was very well thought out. There has been one law fix some of the flaws, and over time, there are sure to be several more fixes.

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Lamont D Sanford
10 days ago

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
For those people who think that the Rent is Too Damned High, all of the financial benefits to renters, owners, builders, and landlords is an exceptional Private Sector solution to a 50 year old problem that government only makes worse.

Charm is in the eye of the beholder. While I agree the SoBe neighborhood, the part that is on the National Historic Register, and is the largest collection of Art Deco architecture in the world is appealing, other neighborhood are not as charming.

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Anonymous
11 days ago

Way to start ruining Buena Vista. As a local to the neighborhood, 36 floors is way too much and to top it off, the tower is facing the residential side, not even the tracks.

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Anonymous
11 days ago

Consider it a bookend to high-rise development this side of the tracks. There are folks on here who want all of Buena Vista bulldozed for cereal boxes atop parking podiums with Metromoober stops every corner, unaware of something called zoning and historic designation.

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Anonymous
11 days ago

It’s ridiculous. So many parcels on the other side of the tracks (Biscayne and 37, 38 just on that side of the 112) and they go and do this. Tacky.

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DroppingFacts
11 days ago

Found the NIMBY!! “NoT iN mY nEiGhBorHoOd” LOL….increasing supply decreases rents smh

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Anonymous
11 days ago

Not at all, I’m all for development. I’ve lived in downtown and the urban core for the last 15 years, but to put a building of that size facing military houses is silly. Tacky.

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Andy Spades
11 days ago

Diesel Brightline and Tri-Rail already ruined it. The noise, the smoke, the laud horn at night. The only way to live in this area is 10th floor or higher.

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Downtowner
11 days ago

Wow, that sucks. Thanks, Tallahassee.

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transplant
11 days ago

Everyone downvoting you, but if you’ve lived in Chicago or NYC, you know that building heights directly correlate to the neighborhood vibes. It’s the reason why West Village, Greenwich Village, East Village, SoHo, Nolita, etc don’t have 600 ft buildings. If you’re the kind of YIMBY that all you want is tall buildings like if you’re playing Sim City, you’re almost as bad as a true NIMBY (think a YIMBY that’s willing to knock down a 200 year building for another generic tall glass box).

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Dropping Real Facts
11 days ago

This is so accurate. In Manhattan no one lives in Midtown with all the giant buildings! It’s the worst part! People want to live in the low/mid rise districts like you mentioned but Miami barley has any to begin with and now with Live Local there will soon be none 🙁

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anonymous
10 days ago

Delusion, the demand is inelastic in both Miami and NYC, people would live in a tent in both cities if the price was right. They would take a house, and apartment, there is no real preference because of how high price and demand are – there is only what you can afford.

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transplant
10 days ago

exactly

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Lamont D Sanford
10 days ago

Wrong.
In Miami anyway, there are plenty of SFR neighborhoods, low density multifam neighborhoods, and Live Local prohibits developing on them, and requires that there are step downs as larger buildings get closer to the mid and low rise buildings.

Speaking specifically about the project at the top of the page…
Since at least 1994 and on to 2014, it was a Church, parking lot, and 4 one story apartment buildings on the east side next to the railroad tracks.

The proposed community above is replacing about 16 dwelling units with 178 dwelling units. 83,338 square feet of office space, and 48,111 square feet of retail and dining.

The street next to the railroad tracks is not “charming”. The street next to the railroad tracks hasn’t have “neighborhood vibes” in at least 30 years.

I get it….the smarter than thou crowd likes to generalize.
However, for the open minded, study the lot, the history, and know that a train station coming a short walk away is going to inform its future.

This is a great project.

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Lamont D Sanford
10 days ago

Miami was founded 129 years ago.
Mother nature knocked down the 200 yr old buildings a long time ago.

Okay, building heights directly correlate to “neighborhood vibes”, and government restrictions on property heights directly correlate to housing affordability.

Nantucket has amazing vibes.
San Francisco has vibes.
Coral Gables has vibes.

All have oppressive building restrictions that create vibes and astronomical housing prices.
Pick one.

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Build Miami
10 days ago

So you want to kill vibes in all neighborhoods? Plenty of high rise areas to build something tall with density for affordability purposes. Edgewater, Omni, Downtown all make sense for that. I think building rowhouses in other neighborhoods like BV, LH, and Northern Overtown allows for “neighborhood vibes” the OP was talking about and creates affordable housing. Upzoning everything to be like Brickell will make Miami very lame quickly and will not attract new residents and companies to grow the city. Balance is key

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Fern
10 days ago

You make a good point, but people are massively opposed to even small apartment buildings in Single-family residential areas. When that’s a no-go the only way to build enough housing to bend down rents is with large apartment buildings like the one above

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Anonymous
10 days ago

I think that cities should change over time. A one story building in the center of the city is like the movie “Up”. Its charming in theory, but at some point its ok to move on unless there is significant historic importance to an area.

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Lamont D Sanford
10 days ago

The Live Local Act was written by a Rep and Senator from Miami-Dade County to address a “housing crisis”.
It applies only to the counties where Federal Census data shows a very high income/housing cost ratio.

It will be a national model for states in the United States who are serious about housing for their citizens.

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The Gripper
10 days ago

Just reading the comments of Lamont D Sanford and he comes across as a serious and well informed individual- well done sir! The Gripper salutes you!

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B C
10 days ago

“It will be a national model for states in the United States who are serious about housing for their citizens.” No it won’t and the reason it won’t be is because it’s not a mandatory requirement for new development. The only good affordable housing is purpose built. Otherwise its just a shoehorned in afterthought to increase FAR for a developer in cities like Miami, Chicago, LA and NYC.

If you want good affordable housing, it should be entire projects designed and financed to meet 60-80% area AMI and with developers willing to hold properties for longer than 10 years, but everyone in Miami right now is underwriting for 5 year cycles and unfortunately they don’t carry about 30 year holds. If that IRR isn’t 20-25%, its no good.

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