Selling Miami’s future | Mika Mattingly | Colliers International Urban Core Division | Página 2

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Downtown
Renaissance
The historic area of downtown Miami wasn’t high on
the list of places to go in previous decades unless you were
looking for electronics, luggage or jewelry.
Brickell Avenue long ago eclipsed Flagler Street as a
location to do business, but the fortunes are starting to tilt
back to the north side of the river.
A couple of months ago, I was reading yet another story
about New York developer Moishe Mana’s purchases in
downtown – 39 buildings and $300 million. I read about
Colliers International broker Mika Mattingly and called
her up to see if she would do an interview. Mattingly was
totally engaging. She not only gave me an interview, she Editor-in-Chief Kevin Gale
also gave me a tour of some of the properties.
I appreciated Mattingly’s enthusiasm as she talked about
the potential of downtown. You can’t really appreciate the architectural gems in downtown
unless you get out of your car and walk around.
We had a glass of wine at PB Station at the Langford Hotel, which is the type of chic dining
spot you would expect to see in an urban core. Upstairs, the Pawn Broker bar provides live
music and packs crowds into its rooftop deck, which has sweeping views of the skyline.
Mana has the ability to curate what’s happening in the downtown area and is plugged in
heavily to the arts scene. His Mana Contemporary in New Jersey has taken a former tobacco
warehouse and turned it into a place where painting, sculpture, photography, dance, film, sound,
and performance art can all take place. He’s also active in the Wynwood arts scene and has
made immense progress in planning a 9.72-million-square-foot mixed-use project on 23 acres.
SFBW consistently has covered the Brightline high-speed rail service, and our story on
downtown also looks at how this will interact with, and help facilitate, the revival in the nearby
historic area. My prediction is that Mana will be able to curate an interesting mix of the arts,
retail, restaurants and residential space in downtown that will make it the region’s new hot
attraction. It will get hot again just as Miami Beach did, and those of us in Broward and Palm
Beach counties will find it pretty easy to hop aboard Brightline and have a night on the town.

Kevin Gale

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DECEMBER 2016 • www.sfbwmag.com