SPOTLIGHT
Mercedes-Benz is the latest luxury car manufacturer to lend its brand name to a Miami-Dade condominium project. JDS Development is scheduled to complete Mercedes-Benz Place in 2028 with 791 units rising 60 stories high. The Brickell development is selling studios for $550,000 and three-bedroom homes for $4 million.
Mercedes-Benz has one other branded condominium in Dubai. The 2.5-million-sq.- ft. Brickell project will include office space, a hotel and an open park.
Miami already is home to Aston Martin Residences and Porsche Design Tower Miami. And, the same week Mercedes-Benz Place was announced, ground was broken on Bentley Residences Miami, which is on Sunny Isles Beach.
Like Aston Martin Residences, parking should never be an issue at the 62-story Bentley Residences. Both feature car lifts — named Dezervators after developer and founder Gil Dezer — that allow residents to park in a sky garage outside their units.
Bentley Residences’ 216 units are 40% sold, with units starting at $5.6 million. It is scheduled to be completed in late 2027.
In North Bay Village, Riviera Horizons has started selling units in Pagani Residences, branded by the Italian “hypercar” maker. The 28-story condominium should be ready in 2027 and will have 70 units, with prices starting at $2.4 million.
RETAIL
- Carewell, an online retailer for family caregivers, raised $24.7 million in Series B funds. The company recently moved its headquarters from Charlotte, N.C. to Miami, where founder Blanca Padilla is from. Padilla founded Carewell in 2017, modeling her business after the online pet supplier Chewy to sell items to care for young and old, including walkers, nutritional supplements, diapers and hygiene wipes.
EDUCATION
- Hundreds of low-income Miami-Dade high school students completed a financial literacy program taught by Morgan Stanley employees. Achieve Miami, a non-profit focused on education, partnered with the financial powerhouse for the program, which offered three sessions at 10 high schools throughout the county. Students learned about budgeting, savings and credit to prepare them for adult life.
- Florida International University has teamed with the Bureau of Justice Assistance to produce a free online safety program for law enforcement officers dealing with dangerous drugs such as fentanyl. The course also covers how to collect, document and store the evidence. It can take months for toxicology tests to come back, but the field kits can provide probable cause on the scene and identify chemical signatures that can be tied back to dealers and manufacturers, FIU says.
CYBERSECURITY
- Miami-based Kriptos is one of 17 cybersecurity companies invited to join the Google for Startups Growth Academy: AI for Cybersecurity program. The three-month program grants startups access to Google’s tools and helps them scale. The startups come from nine European and North American countries. Kriptos uses AI to analyze, classify and label documents to enhance cybersecurity and regulation compliance.
HEALTH TECH
- HealthSnap, which launched a remote patient monitoring app in 2015, raised $25 million in a Series B round. The app includes care management for patients with conditions such as hypertension, diabetes and heart failure by delivering patients’ health data to care providers and providing telehealth and virtual care. The company has nearly tripled its employees in the past year and previously raised $23.5 million in funding. The company says the Series B money will allow it to build its national clinical team, meet increasing demand and start building an AI-powered population health and analytics program.
HOSPITALITY
- Renovations have started on the Confidante Hotel, a Miami Beach Art Deco hotel built in 1940. It will reopen toward year’s end as an Andaz Hotel, which is a Hyatt brand, offering 288 rooms and 68 suites. The José Andrés Group will run two new restaurants and a bar in the hotel.
REAL ESTATE
- A $1-billion real estate portfolio held by Miami-based Flagler Healthcare investments is moving to Strategic Public Health Equities and Real Estate (SPHERE). The properties include outpatient centers, medical offices and long-term acute care hospitals in 15 states. SPHERE says its mission is “to strategically invest in the greater built environment that contributes to the betterment of public health.”
- Homestead is getting a 28-unit warehouse with nearly 70,000 square feet. Forman Capital is financing the $12.8-million Racetrack Toy Collection project by South Florida warehouse builder E&M Warehouse II. It will have units for sale starting at $656,000.
DEVELOPMENT
- The Miami River Commission signed off on designs by Miami-based Arquitectonica for Miami Riverbridge, a mixed-use development on the site of the old James L. Knight Center and Hyatt Regency downtown. The $1.5-billion project will include three towers ranging from 52 to 87 stories that will create 1,342 multifamily units, 100,000 square feet of commercial space and 615 hotel rooms. A glass-enclosed skybridge 700 feet up will link two of the towers and be the site of a restaurant and lounge. Construction could start next year and be completed in 2029.