Green goddess
With groundbreaking set for April, Brickell Financial Centre, a 40-story glass tower to be developed just below the Miami River by Foram Group, will probably be the last of the big three office buildings to open for occupancy.
While being the latecomer might seem to be a handicap for the building, Brickell Financial comes with a singular reputation: It will be the largest green office building in Florida.
Last August, the U.S. Green Building Council pre-approved the energy conservation systems of the tower's shell and core at the "certified" level, the minimum level of LEED designation.
LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a voluntary "green" rating and certification system developed five years ago by the building council.
The office tower is the first phase of a complex that will also include a 68-story tower with a 300-room hotel, retail and additional office space, and a 30,000-square-foot landscaped public plaza with at least three restaurants. The plaza is being designed by Sasaki Associates, designer of Disneyland Paris and the 2008 Beijing Olympic campus.
The building will not be ready until at least the last quarter of 2009, but the developers are hoping its green moniker will help it make up for lost time. "We're getting a lot of free public relations," says Randy Olen, a broker with CB Richard Ellis, the agent for the building. "The companies that are coming in from all over the world always talk about the environment and how concerned they are about their employees. They want to be in a LEED-certified building."
Olen insists that Brickell Financial's timing is just right. "If you look back at 1998,1999 and 2000, those were the years buildings were being built," and leases were signed, he says. "Ten years later, in 2009, 2010 and 2011, there will be the largest rollover of leases in the history of office buildings in Miami."
The building's developer, Loretta Cockrum, chairman and CEO of Foram Group, says she held New York City's Rockefeller Center as a conceptual model for the mixed-use complex.
For the full article, please visit: www.therealdeal.net
