Fouquet's Miami Files Demolition and Vertical Permits as Design District Condo Nears Groundbreaking

Fouquet's first residential address is moving from renderings to paperwork that comes right before a shovel.

The joint venture developing Fouquet's Hotel & Residences in Miami's Design District has submitted a batch of permit applications to the City of Miami for the site at 3995 North Miami Avenue. The filings include several demolition permits, a site work permit covering foundation preparation, a phased vertical construction permit and a master construction permit. Mobius Construction is named as general contractor. The demolition requests have been filed, while the site work, vertical and master permits are still awaiting approval.

Clearing the land means taking down more than a dozen low-rise buildings that now hold shops, offices and leisure tenants. The ownership group paid about $170 million to assemble those parcels in late 2022.

The team
The project is a partnership of Fort Partners, Constellation Hotels Holding, Raycliff Capital and Miami Design District Associates, the Design District landlord made up of Dacra, L Catterton Real Estate and Brookfield Properties. Pritzker Prize winner David Chipperfield Architects is designing the buildings with CUBE 3, landscape architecture is by Perry Guillot, and Paris studio RDAI, known for its Hermès boutiques, is handling the residential amenity interiors.

The program
Plans that went before the city's Urban Development Review Board earlier this year call for two buildings of 12 and 24 stories, rising 185 and 309 feet. The scheme includes 143 condominium residences, an 85-room Fouquet's hotel and 20 condo-hotel units, along with more than 50,000 square feet of street-level retail and 178 parking spaces on an underground level shared by owners and hotel guests. The ground plane adds a public plaza and landscaped walkways meant to tie the towers into the surrounding shopping streets.

Residences range from one to four bedrooms, plus penthouses, with pricing starting at $1.8 million. The hotel will service and manage the homes, giving owners access to five Fouquet's dining concepts and hotel-style services such as housekeeping, pantry stocking, event planning, a chauffeur and round-the-clock concierge.

Amenities
The developer has also released the first images of RDAI's amenity spaces, which total more than 40,000 square feet across indoor and outdoor areas. The renderings show warm wood, green tile and sculptural furniture. The lineup includes a rooftop pool and bar, a rooftop lounge, a spa with a hammam and cold plunge, a juice bar lounge, an on-demand salon, a fitness center with a private training studio, a golf simulator, an entertaining suite, an executive lounge and a children's playroom.

Positioning and timing
The Paris brand, which dates to 1899 on the Champs-Élysées and runs hotels in New York, Paris, Courchevel and St. Barth, has never before attached its name to private residences. Presales have reportedly reached the millions. Once built, the project would be the tallest and largest development of its kind in the Design District, which has been defined so far by low-rise flagship retail.

Demolition and construction are expected to start within the next few months, pending the remaining approvals, and the team is targeting completion in 2030. The sales gallery is at 39 NE 39th Street.