Mega Miami Development Seeks to Tame the Car

Planned for the outskirts of Miami's current urban core, Hong Kong developer Swire Properties' CitiCentre project will feature two residential towers, an office tower, hotel, and 520,000-square-foot mall. But it's the project's efforts to keep automobiles "as low-profile as possible" that have Hanks's attention.

"CitiCentre will spend millions of dollars freezing the soil beneath the three-block complex to hold back ground water while it installs a rare underground parking garage in Miami's downtown," notes Hanks, who also points out that, "Swire took the unusual step of putting the restaurants for its mall on a top floor in part because that's the same level as the adjoining station for Miami's county-run Metromover."

"Swire's top U.S. executive told a business group Wednesday that the $1 billion CitiCentre was designed to thrive in a future where Miami residents are far less enamored with driving to work and play than they are now," writes Hanks. 

"'We don't think petrol will be $5 a gallon forever,' Stephen Owens, president of Swire Properties Inc., told a breakfast reception held by the Beacon Council, Miami-Dade's economic-development group. 'We're living in a world of subsidized energy, and we don't think it can last forever.'"

According to Hanks, "The push to make CitiCentre more pedestrian friendly also meshes with Miami's ambitions to become more of a 24-hour metropolis, where thriving shopping areas serve both offices and residences."