WGM: Genghis Cohen in Sunset Harbour, Ito-Kaya in World Center, & Buccan to Coral Gables

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WHAT’S GOOD MIAMI: 4.14.26

On My Mind

• Everything in Miami Starts with Real Estate

  People talk about Miami’s restaurant scene like it’s a food story. It’s not. It’s a real estate story with good lighting and a tasting menu.

Beach Business

• Where’s David Martin?: West Palm Edition

  Our favorite developer who is everywhere all at once is heading north.

Hospitality Local Insider

• Genghis Cohen Is Coming to Sunset Harbour.

  Sunset Harbour is getting legendary NY-style Chinese food via LA.

• Gary Vee, Josh Capon, & David Rodolitz Bringing ITO•Kaya to Miami.

  ITO•Kaya is coming to JEM Private Residences at Miami Worldcenter.

• Everyone’s Going North. Buccan Is Headed South.

  Buccan is opening 3 concepts including its legendary sandwich shop in Coral Gables.

Miami Sports Update

• The Heat & The Play In, A Love Story

  Another year another play-in. Tonight is win or go home.

Luxe Developments We Love

• We have a New Series & We are Starting with the Top - > Aman Miami Beach

  Russia’s James Bond, Vladislav Doronin, will turn you into Miami’s James Bond.

ON MY MIND: Everything in Miami Starts with Real Estate

People talk about Miami’s restaurant scene like it’s a food story. It’s not. It’s a real estate story with good lighting and a tasting menu.

Watch how it actually works. A developer needs to sell condos. A hospitality group gets called. Suddenly there’s a concept, a chef, a PR push, a reservation list. The food is real. The talent is real. But the reason it exists, the reason it exists here, at this corner, in this neighborhood, right now, is a cap rate calculation made in a conference room eighteen months earlier.

That’s not cynicism. That’s Miami.

The wellness boom is the same story in compression pants. Pilates studios, infrared saunas, IV drip lounges, they don’t appear in Wynwood or Brickell because the founders woke up inspired. They appear because a developer needed a tenant that signals the right kind of resident. Wellness is the new retail anchor. The endorphins are just a bonus.

Even the neighborhoods are real estate decisions dressed up as cultural moments. The Miami Design District didn’t become a luxury destination because taste migrated. It became one because Craig Robins spent two decades quietly assembling the blocks underneath it. Little River is in the middle of that story right now. So is Allapattah. The culture is the flare gun. Capital is what follows.

And then there’s transportation, the most honest example of all. Every rail line, every bridge, every traffic study, every political fight about where the Brightline stops next. Follow the money and you will find the land holdings. Infrastructure in Miami is just real estate development with a public budget.

None of this is a criticism. It is, in fact, what makes Miami one of the most incredible cities in America. You can actually see how it works. The machine isn’t hidden. If you understand real estate here, you understand everything else. The restaurants, the culture, the politics, the neighborhoods, they’re all downstream.

The question worth asking in Miami, is who owns the land underneath it.

BEACH BUSINESS

Where’s David Martin?: West Palm Edition

Grove at Grand Bay. Park Grove. Eighty Seven Park. Five Park. GLASS. Mr. C Residences Coconut Grove. Mr. C Residences West Palm Beach. The Miami Beach Convention Center Hotel. Grove Central. Villa Miami. THE WELL Coconut Grove. THE WELL Bay Harbor Islands. And now, 2023 Flagler Drive, West Palm Beach.

Our favorite developer who is everywhere all at once is heading north with the rest of the big wigs.

David Martin’s Terra, partnering with BH Group’s Isaac and Liat Toledano, is under contract to buy a 1.6-acre waterfront site on Flagler Drive from billionaire Jeff Greene for north of $90 million. Greene paid $1.5 million for the same land in 2014. The property sits across from Currie Park, which is getting a $35 million renovation, and right next to where Related Group and BH are building the Ritz-Carlton Residences. A 350-foot luxury condo tower is the likely play.

Terra already has Mr. C Residences West Palm underway, 27 stories, 146 condos, 110 hotel keys, 85% presold. Now a second project on Flagler. West Palm has more than 2,000 condos in the pipeline from Miami’s biggest names: Steve Ross, Related, Fort Partners, and now Terra twice.

If you want to know where Miami’s money class is going next, watch where David Martin buys dirt. He’s never been wrong about a neighborhood. Not once.

HOSPITALITY LOCAL INSIDER

Genghis Cohen Is Coming to Sunset Harbour. NY Chinese via LA.

Forty-two years in Los Angeles. Never left California. Until now.

Genghis Cohen, the legendary New York-style Chinese-American restaurant that opened on Fairfax in 1983, inspired the Seinfeld Chinese restaurant episode, and has been feeding multi-generational LA families, musicians, skateboarders, and celebrities from the same red booths for four decades, is making its first expansion ever. To Miami Beach. To Sunset Harbour. Taking over the former Sardinia space, opening late 2026.

Marc Rose and Med Abrous of Call Mom hospitality (The Spare Room, White Limozeen in Nashville, Winsome) are bringing the whole thing: the egg rolls, the queen chicken, the crab rangoon, the kitschy ‘80s décor, the fish tank, the red booths, and the tiki-inspired cocktails. Partnering with hotel mogul Jason Pomeranc. The menu is Jewish-inspired Chinese cuisine, the kind of food that New Yorkers who moved to LA spent 40 years being nostalgic about, now landing in a neighborhood where New Yorkers who moved to Miami will feel exactly the same way.

Sunset Harbour now has Brooklyn-style pizza and LA-style Chinese food. What a city. What a world. I’m in love.

→ More on Genghis Cohen

Gary Vee, Josh Capon, & David Rodolitz Bringing ITO•Kaya to Miami.