Lincoln Road was once Miami Beach’s most iconic street. But this “Fifth Avenue of the South” — built by Carl Fisher and redesigned in the 1950s by Miami’s most influential architect, Morris Lapidus — had seen better days. For decades, empty storefronts and tchotchke shops that served tourists, not locals, blighted the pedestrian mall. Now, a Lincoln Road redevelopment plan, drawing $4 billion in new investments, is underway, aiming to create an attractive, walkable neighborhood leading to some of the most expensive new condo towers in the city.
“Lincoln Road was really the epicenter of Miami Beach,” says Pietro Belmonte, part of the team at Douglas Elliman that is marketing a $125 million penthouse, as well as 29 other covetable condos at the forthcoming Ritz-Carlton Residences. “Morris Lapidus’ dream was to have Lincoln Road start from the bay and meet the ocean. That was never quite realized.” Currently, Lincoln Road crosses Collins Avenue and ends in an anticlimactic cul-de-sac just shy of the beach outside the Ritz-Carlton, South Beach hotel (adjacent to the residences, which have yet to break ground).
Now, the developer of the Ritz, Sobe Sky Development, is changing that. A $12 million private-public beachwalk project featuring a Lapidus-inspired “gateway” will extend Lincoln Road to the ocean for the first time and include public artworks. Farther up the road, the city has new landscaping, outdoor seating, sidewalks and an amphitheater in the works. New side street office buildings are rising, including a project from Black Lion’s colorful Robert Rivani with a speakeasy, restaurants and an outpost of LA’s Monarch athletic club. Playboy has signed a 10-year lease for the penthouse at Rivani’s remixed Michigan Avenue building, with plans for a members-only club. One block north, the iconic Delano hotel is also scheduled to reopen early next year.
In 2024, a penthouse asking $120 million sold at the Shore Club — a Robert A.M. Stern Architects redevelopment of a historic Art Deco building less than two blocks north of Lincoln. It will have an Auberge Resorts Collection hotel and just 49 homes. The 18-story tower is nearly sold out, but four turnkey residences remain at Cromwell House — an original Art Deco structure on the property. Prices at these four- to five-bedroom condos (ranging from 3,318 to 4,241 square feet) start at $9 million, and Douglas Elliman is handling sales.
The Shore Club is providing good comps for the 15-story, 30-unit Ritz, where prices start at $4.25 million. Rising behind the old Sagamore Hotel near the corner of Lincoln and Collins, its $125 million, 14,638-square-foot penthouse — a combination of two units — will have 13 bedrooms and 15 full bathrooms and two pools: one for sunrise, the other for sunset. “We are bringing the people who are bringing the shops and chefs,” says Belmonte of the billionaire buyers he and Douglas Elliman team leader Fredrik Eklund are targeting. “We have José Andrés [at the Ritz-Carlton hotel]. Auberge and Delano are about to announce very important chefs. Lincoln Road has had its ups and its downs, but it’s going to be a very important strip.”
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