Amid the annual hoopla of Miami Art Week, the top dogs at Diesel provided a sneak peek of their Wynwood condo project, which joins a wave of luxury retailers breaking into South Florida real estate development.
The Italian fashion brand’s founder Renzo Rosso and his son Andrea Rosso held court inside the Diesel Wynwood 28 sales gallery Wednesday morning, answering questions about the 143-unit project, as well as giving reporters a virtual reality tour of the building once it’s completed.
“Wynwood has a particular story,” Andrea Rosso, Diesel’s director of licensing, told The Real Deal. “Because of the creative energy here and the amazing spaces that have been created, you talk more about Wynwood and talk less about South Beach. We saw the potential to express our own design creativity.”
A rendering of the project
More than a year ago, Diesel announced it was partnering with Vicenza, Italy-based Bel Invest Group to build the “loft-style” project on a six-lot, nearly 1-acre site at 115 to 161 Northwest 28th Street. The site is next to land owned by the Related Group and Tony Cho, where both are planning a residential project on that property that may include micro condos.
Designed by Zyscovich Architects, Diesel Wynwood 28 would have 226,000 square feet of residential space and about 24,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space. It will offer 395-square-foot studios starting at $399,000, two-bedroom units starting at about 1,1000 square feet for $949,000, three-bedroom units with 1,500 square feet of living space going for $1.5 million and a pair of two-floor penthouses with rooftop terraces totaling 3,000 square feet priced at $5.5 million.
Diesel also launched a marketing campaign for the development, offering to sell 143 “one-of-a-kind” T-shirts starting at just under $1.6 million. With the shirt, the buyer would receive a condo.
As Diesel has expanded into interior design and home furnishings in recent years, jumping into real estate construction and development was a natural progression, Andrea Rosso said.
“In a year and a half, you will see a big building that is completed furnished by Diesel Living,” he said. “In the future, general contracting will be one of our primary purposes. It is difficult for fashion companies to go into the design field. We believe we are approaching it the right way.”
The virtual reality tour takes users through the proposed building from the street all the way up to a penthouse rooftop terrace.
“We studied how the sunlight would hit the building from the first floor to the top floor,” Andrea Rosso said. “So if the inside of a unit is dark, we used lighter colors and materials and darker tones for units with more light coming in. We want to give a feeling of living in a space that has the right balance.”
Diesel Wynwood 28 also marks the first U.S. project for Bel Invest, which also has offices in Miami, Berlin and Barcelona. The real estate investment firm assembled the lots between 2015 and 2017, paying a combined $9.6 million.
Diesel joins Missoni and Fendi, two other luxury retail brands breaking into real estate development. Missoni and OKO Group are building Missoni Baia in Edgewater and Fendi and the Chateau Group completed Fendi Chateau in Surfside two years ago. It’s the first Fendi-branded condo building in the world. Related and Dezer Development also just completed construction of the Residences by Armani/Casa in Sunny Isles Beach.