WGM: Fouquet's Design District, Claudie vs LPM in Brickell, and Foreclosure at the Goodtime

Plus 2, 50 Million penthouse pre-sales at the Mandarin Oriental & Ice-makers in the Grove

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WHAT’S GOOD MIAMI: 3.10.26

Beach Business

• Not Such a Good Time for the Goodtime Hotel.

  Being 2 blocks from the beach means you might as well be 2 miles away.

• $100 Million. Sold. Before a Single Shovel Hit the Ground.

  Records keep getting smashed in Miami real estate

• Vision Without Execution Is Just Real Estate Fantasy.

  Kassin & Berg of Infinity take over SHVO’s visionary play for Lincoln-Alton Road

• Paris is Coming to the Design District.

  Fouquet’s has been announced as the hotel partner for the Miami-Design District

Hospitality Local Insider

• Friday Lunch Club: Claudie Brickell.

  Is Claudie coming for La Petit Maison’s lunch? Only time will tell.

Real Estate

• Luxe Listings We Love: $7.95m with an Outdoor Ice-maker.

  An Ice-maker apparently can live better than most humans

On My Mind: Gary V & Me. New York vs. Miami.

Gary Vaynerchuk (who I love btw) said Miami is the G League and New York is the NBA. He’s right. If the game you’re playing is working yourself to death in a city that rewards suffering as a virtue, then yes. Miami is not that league.

Because New York isn’t the NBA. New York is the Big Lie. The lie that grinding harder in a harder place makes you more serious. More successful. More real. The lie that cold weather and high taxes and two hours on the subway is the price of admission to a meaningful life.

Miami is the Masters. Not the minor leagues, it’s the graduate degree, the doctorate. You come here when you’ve figured life out. When you understand that life is not the thing that happens after the work is done. Life is the work. The relationships, the journey, the weather, the water, the culture, that’s not a reward. That’s the point.

The people who moved here from New York they graduated. To something better, something their parents nearly killed themselves in New York to enjoy for maybe 5-10 years of their life.

Gary, with love, you built your whole brand telling people to outwork everyone. I respect that. But you’re playing the wrong game.

Winning is working your ass off AND swimming in the ocean before your 9am call. Being present for your kids in the morning. No property tax. No income tax. Earning big and living a life you don’t have to vacation from. Breathing ocean air, not wallowing in subway grime.

The people who left New York didn’t give up. They graduated.

Working harder for less in return is amateur hour. Does New York have better tech leaders? Finance leaders? Higher grossing restaurants? No. No. No. We have better sports teams and It wasn’t your guy in the Super Bowl half time show it was ours.

Miami figured it out. The rest of the country and the world, is catching up.

That’s What’s Good Miami.

BEACH BUSINESS

Not Such a Good Time for the Goodtime Hotel

Miami Beach has a rule it doesn’t put in writing: if you’re not on the water, you’re fighting uphill.

The Goodtime Hotel sits two blocks from the beach. Two blocks that, in this market, might as well be two miles. The 266-room hotel, built with city zoning incentives, celebrity backing, and genuine ambition for Washington Avenue, is now facing a $150 million foreclosure action. The lender has been covering payroll and delinquent sales taxes just to keep the doors open.

The story isn’t really about one hotel. It’s about a structural reality Miami Beach has never solved.

When occupancy softens, the water-adjacent properties hold. The luxury beachfront product keeps its rate. Everything else compresses. Goodtime’s price point, $240 to $400 a night, put it squarely in no man’s land. Not cheap enough to fill on value. Not positioned well enough to command a premium. Two blocks off the sand with no compelling reason to choose it over something closer to the ocean.

The celebrity moment helped at launch. Pharrell Williams as co-developer made headlines. The rooftop pool parties drew crowds. But that energy faded by mid-2024, and when it did, there was no locational advantage to fall back on. The Art Deco storefronts built into the hotel never filled with retail. Washington Avenue never turned around.

Miami Beach hotel occupancy dipped last year. Revenue per room stalled. The high-end waterfront segment was the only bright spot.

The Goodtime had everything except the one thing that matters most in this market.

It wasn’t on the water.

$100 Million. Sold. Before a Single Shovel Hit the Ground.

Miami just set a new record twice in two weeks.

Two penthouse residences at the Residences at Mandarin Oriental, Miami closed at $49.9 million each, the highest-priced condo transactions in mainland Miami history, at approximately $6,300 per square foot. Separate buyers. Separate deals. Same address on Brickell Key.

Each roughly 8,000-square-foot home sits on the 66th floor, five bedrooms, dual kitchens, a library, sweeping terraces, and a private outdoor lap pool overlooking the ocean. And none of it exists yet. The project doesn’t deliver until 2030. Groundbreaking hasn’t even happened.

That’s the move. That’s the signal.

Swire Properties has now pushed past $1.3 billion in total sales across two towers, with February alone generating more than $90 million in activity. The development that replaces the original Mandarin Oriental isn’t just a building. It’s the last available waterfront site on Brickell Key, designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox, with interiors by Tristan Auer and AD100 designer Laura Gonzalez.

One buyer reportedly relocated from the West Coast. The ultra-luxury segment above $10M in South Florida hit its second-highest total on record in 2025. Early 2026 data shows sustained inflows from California and New York.

Miami isn’t catching up to New York. Miami is becoming the standard.

The penthouses sold. The record is set. The city keeps rising.

Vision Without Execution Is Just Real Estate Fantasy.

The renaissance of the Lincoln Road–Sunset Harbor corridor keeps building momentum, and this corner just found its team. Infinity Collective, the firm behind the Esmé Hotel on Española Way, has filed preliminary plans for a 14-story mixed-use building at 1656–1680 Alton Road. The former Epicure site. 184 units. 85,000 square feet of retail. 35,000 square feet of offices. And a padel court.

Steven Kassin and Dave Berg, the partners who turned Esmé into one of Miami Beach’s most compelling hospitality plays, are the ones making the move. They picked up the 1.4-acre assemblage last September for $28.3 million, the exact amount Shvo had borrowed on it, via deed in lieu of foreclosure.