A partnership that includes the developers of One Thousand Museum have the green light to construct a 649-foot-tall waterfront condo tower in Edgewater with a helipad on the roof.
Miami’s Urban Development Review Board approved the design of the proposed tower at 710 Northeast 29th Street by a vote of 3 to 1 on Wednesday.
Called 729 Edge, it will be built by Michael Konig, Alex Posth, Kevin Venger, and Louis Birdman. Venger and Birdman were part of a development team that constructed the Miami condo tower One Thousand Museum in 2019, the last building designed by the late architect Zaha Hadid.
729 Edge will be designed by ODP Architecture & Design.
The 729 Edge tower will be 342,848 square feet in size and include 70 residential units, 13,037 square feet of retail, and the helicopter pad. It will also have 193 parking spaces, although only 160 of those spaces will be in the tower’s pedestal. The other 33 parking spaces will be located in a nine-level, 134-foot-tall parking garage that will be constructed between 483 and 530 Northeast 29th Street.
Map of the future 729 Edge tower site and parking garage site
Iris Escarra, an attorney for the developers, explained that with the city’s required waterfront setbacks, there simply wasn’t enough room to build all the parking spaces on site. “This was a complex site for redevelopment,” she told the board.
The garage will also include 9,900 square feet of retail. There will be an activity space on the top floor of the garage, although it is yet to be determined if it will be tennis courts, a pool, or something else, said Kurt Dannwolf, president of ODP Architects.
UDRB chairman Ignacio Permuy wasn’t entirely pleased with the design. He noted that there was no design “connection” with the garage a block away. Permuy also felt that at certain angles 729 Edge looks more like an office building instead of a luxury condo tower. “It’s a missed opportunity,” Permuy said twice.
And although 726 Edge does resemble One Thousand Museum (which stands at 699 feet high), UDRB member Robert Behar felt the future Edgewater tower didn’t imitate it enough. “Look at the Zaha Hadid building… everything comes together,” Behar said.
The UDRB majority approved the design, but asked that the development team come back and consider new designs for the façade. The board also asked that there be an architectural connection between the tower and the parking garage.
UDRB member Dean Lewis cast the dissenting vote. “I think their presentation was not complete enough,” Lewis told The Real Deal. Lewis would have preferred that the approval be continued for another month so that the architect can “turn around” the design.
But Escarra pleaded for a vote that day. “We have a tight schedule,” she said.