For the super rich in Miami, it’s no longer enough to own a coastal view. If you really want to make a splash on the elite real estate scene, you’ll snag a piece of a private island. From North Miami to the heart of Biscayne Bay, developers are pouring millions of dollars into full-service luxury communities on secluded private islands.
The trend isn’t exactly new — affluent havens like Fisher Island and Star Island were among Miami’s most desirable areas a century ago. Now island living is back, but with new levels of luxury that rival five-star resorts.
The current boom was ignited by a $47 million, record-setting home sale in 2012 on secluded Indian Creek Island. Roughly eight miles north of South Beach, the cay has one of the largest concentrations of wealth and power on the planet. It boasts an 18-hole golf course and a private police force. Its list of boldface residents has included Beyoncé, Jay Z, Julio Iglesias, supermodel Adriana Lima and billionaire investor Carl Icahn — but until that jaw-dropping sale two years ago, the area had remained largely under the radar.
An anonymous Russian mogul snapped up the modernist 30,000-square-foot, 10-bedroom, 14-bathroom compound, designed by architect Rene Gonzalez. The purchase, which led to a spate of big-ticket listings on the island, still stands as the most expensive home sale in Miami’s history.
While Indian Creek Island (dubbed “Billionaire Bunker”) remains the city’s poshest private islet, it’s only one of a growing number of island communities luring the global elite to South Florida.
“Islands like Indian Creek offer an unbeatable sense of privacy, scarcity and exclusivity,” explains Douglas Elliman broker Oren Alexander, who made that record $47 million sale. “But you are just a short drive from the best of the city’s action.”
Much like Miami’s sandy beachfront, most of the city’s choicest islands are purely man-made creations — dredged from the seafloor during the city’s initial heyday a century ago. They were a favorite of Miami’s deepest-pocketed residents, particularly the East Coast elite.
While New Yorkers remain a key Miami demographic, island communities are now attracting a more global clientele, including European and South American buyers. That foreign influx is pushing developers to create ever more elaborate island enclaves, built to satisfy the turnkey lifestyle demands of the world’s upper class.
“From a carwash to concierge services, clients today want everything at their fingertips,” says Daniel Lebensohn, co-developer of Privé Island in Aventura. “Because it’s not just about quality of life, but quality of time — wealthy families today want to ensure that every moment is fully maximized.”
One of Miami’s most intriguing new island developments is now rising dramatically atop one of its oldest: Fisher Island. First developed during the Gilded Age in 1905, the 216-acre retreat was once the private escape of the opulent Vanderbilt family. By the 1980s, Fisher Island had traded old money for new, as celebs like Julia Roberts, Oprah Winfrey and Mel Brooks made it their home. Now Fisher Island, which boasted the nation’s wealthiest ZIP code per capita in 2012 and 2013, is again reincarnating, in the form of two new luxe condo towers: Palazzo del Sol and Palazzo del Luna.
Palazzo del Sol is slated to be finished in early 2016. It will feature 47 units, sized from 4,000 to 10,000 square feet, priced from $5 million to just under $33 million. Palazzo del Luna is scheduled to rise two years later.
Meanwhile, some $250 million worth of real estate has already been sold on the 8-acre Privé Island project, set to open in 2016. Like Fisher Island, Privé features two new-build towers, in this case offering a total of 160 condos priced from $2 million to $11 million. Co-developer Lebensohn says the towers are already 50 percent sold, with buyers predominantly from Latin America, New York and (perhaps most surprisingly) other parts of Florida. Along with its luxury amenities, Lebensohn says Privé’s greatest appeal is its exclusivity.
“You can’t just build new islands anymore, the restrictions and regulations are too stringent,” he explains. “It took us over a decade just to build the bridge to connect Privé.”
Also joining the island party is an intriguing new development just south of Privé on little-known Maule Lake: Amillarah Private Islands. Developed by Netherlands-based Dutch Docklands, Amillarah is a community of 29 private, floating islands. Modeled after similar colonies the company has developed in the Persian Gulf and Maldives, each 10,000-square-foot island (priced at roughly $12.5 million) will include a floating villa with its own sandy beach. The scheme is still in the early develop-ment stages with no firm debut date.
Finally, in the heart of Biscayne Bay, the massive Island Gardens is now advancing on Watson Island after a decade of delays. The $1 billion mixed-use project is highly ambitious, with a clutch of luxury condos and hotel towers anchoring an expansive retail corridor and fronting a deep-water marina. Despite city approval, residents on neighboring islands insist the project will block their views and are suing to halt construction, which is expected to be completed in late 2017.
Although developers say Island Gardens will move forward as planned, this latest litigation only affirms why private island living is so coveted and costly.
“There are literally dozens of properties lining the beach in Miami, but very few on private islands,” says Privé’s Lebensohn. “Islands will always be the most limited kind of real estate, which makes them so rare and valuable.”