A Miami developer is set to begin building a two-tower mixed-use project at 680 Brickell Ave. officials say could launch a green-building trend in Miami-Dade County and help make Brickell Avenue more pedestrian-friendly.

Work on the 1.5 million-square-foot Brickell Financial Centre is under way with the demolition of an existing building. Miami developer Foram Group spent 15 years assembling land for the project, which will include a 40-story tower with 602,000 square feet of rentable Class A office space and a 68-story mixed-use tower with Class A office, retail, hotel and residential space, company CEO Loretta Cockrum said. The $245 million first tower is scheduled for a fall 2009 completion.

The first phase of construction includes the 40-story Class A office tower with 18,030 square feet of ground-floor retail and 30,459 square feet of open space. The second tower will have 463,483 square feet of Class A office space, 3,917 square feet of ground-level retail, a 360-room hotel and 134 luxury condominiums. The towers will include about 1,800 underground parking spaces.

The complex will occupy a full block between Southwest Sixth and Seventh streets on the west side of Brickell Avenue.

The project team last year secured the first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design pre-certification for a project in Florida. The project has silver certification-the second of four levels of LEED certification - but project officials say they want to obtain gold certification during development. Certification is awarded based on five categories - sustainablility, energy and atmosphere, water-efficiency, indoor environmental quality and materials and resources - according to the US Green Building Council, a nonprofit organization that issues LEED certification.

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