South Florida’s longest-running redevelopment story reached another milestone this month. Miami-Dade County commissioners approved financing for the Downtown SoMi Community Development District, a key step that clears the way for roughly $150 million in infrastructure work — water, sewer, utilities, streets and property access — ahead of the planned transformation of the Shops at Sunset Place in South Miami.
The sprawling, largely vacant mall at the corner of US 1 and Sunset Drive has been circling redevelopment for years. The South Miami City Commission approved an initial site plan back in October 2024, and demolition has shifted from an original first-quarter-2026 target to early 2027 as financing and planning work continues. Once underway, the project calls for seven towers ranging from 12 to 33 stories, 1,513 residential units, a 287-room hotel, a 1,300-seat movie theater, more than 200,000 square feet of retail space and nearly 66,000 square feet of office space.
For local business owners, the project is as much about what gets built as when. The site’s development agreement sets a target of reaching $300 million in property value before 2034 to preserve the bonus height allowances that let towers rise to 33 stories — a deadline that keeps pressure on the build-out timeline. Carlos Villanueva, a district sales manager with The Keyes Company’s Coral Gables office, said he expects the project to meet or exceed that milestone, calling the planned retail and office space “the epicenter of South Miami.”
Large redevelopments like this one tend to ripple outward for small and mid-sized businesses long before the first tower tops out — from construction subcontractors and suppliers to the retailers, restaurants and service businesses eyeing space once leasing begins. With the first phase, including a condo-hotel and street improvements, targeted for around 2029, South Miami’s business community has a few years to plan for a very different Sunset Drive corridor.
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Source: Miami Today