Bal Harbour Shops owner proposes $200M expansion

Whitman Family Development proposed a $200 million plan yesterday to ramp up the retail at Bal Harbour Shops.

The 450,000-square-foot shopping center north of Miami Beach – which was last year named the world’s most productive shopping center, measured by sales per square foot – would gain 250,000 square feet of retail space by 2016. The space would include 100,000 square feet of department stores and more than 20 specialty retail shops. Neiman Marcus would expand and a third anchor store would be added, joining Neiman and Saks Fifth Avenue. While they’re at it, they will also build a new 60,799-square-foot church for the Church by the Sea next door.

Matthew Whitman Lazenby, president and chief executive of Whitman Family Development, presented two sets of redevelopment plans to the village of Bal Harbour for review. The owners brought aboard a team of architects to conceive of the master plan: Raymond Jungles Landscape Architects, Zyscovitch Architects, Leo A. Daly Architects and consulting architects Maria Sellek and Mark Hampton.

“The objective of the plan is to respond to the needs of the market and to make sure Bal Harbour Shops remains as compelling a destination tomorrow as it has been for the last 50 years,” Lazenby told the Herald. [Miami Herald] — Mark Maurer