Brickell Financial Centre will be hard to miss with its 40- and 68-floor towers rising toward the sky on Brickell Avenue between Sixth and Seventh streets. But a 30,000-square-foot plaza is the part people may come to know the most.

As a stopover on the avenue, the plaza's granite grounds are designed to entice visitors to get comfortable on a bench, visit a tree-lined garden or just stand and take things in. A design in which the plaza curves up toward Brickell and broadens at its entrance is "an attempt to make the plaza an open invitation from Brickell," said Alan Ward, a principal of Boston architectural firm Sasaki Associates hired by Miami developer Foram Development to design the landscaping of the 1.5 million-square-foot office, hotel and retail complex.

Groundbreaking on the block-long project at 680 Brickell Ave. took place Thursday with Mayor Manny Diaz declaring Miami's green era in full swing. In time, that will mean a downtown area with wide, shaded sidewalks where people can walk off the bumps and bruises of urban life, Mr. Diaz said in his brief remarks.

It's the kind of place Mr. Ward had in mind when he drew up the layout and elements of the plaza. He said he made sure the plaza had plenty of the two things most-valued in the tropics - water and shade.

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