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Miami doesn't do quiet weeks. This one alone: a basketball club backed by an NBA All-Star just staked its claim on Little River, Craig Robins added another $125 million to the Design District's transformation from shopping strip to actual city, and two of last year's buzziest restaurant imports quietly went dark for the summer. Growth, money, and a gut check, all in the same seven days. Let's get into it.
Barry’s meets Equinox for Basketball, Backed by Barry’s, Equinox, and NBA Star Scottie Barnes Coming to Little River
Have you ever heard an idea and said, I can’t believe I didn’t come up with this? That’s Crosscourt.
Pickup basketball is getting the boutique fitness treatment, and it’s landing in Little River in 2027.
Crosscourt, the LA-founded basketball club that blends structured pickup games with the polish of a fitness studio, just raised $2 million to fund its Miami expansion. The investor list reads like a locker room of its own: Toronto Raptors All-Star Scottie Barnes, Barry’s Bootcamp Executive Chairman Joey Gonzalez, content creator and entrepreneur Kristopher London, plus earlier backers Equinox co-founder Lavinia Errico. PrizePicks founder Adam Wexler, podcast host Joy Taylor and Dollar Shave Club founder Michael Dubin.
The Miami location, its second after LA, will sit at 7225 NW 1st Ct in Little River. Renderings show indoor courts, a locker room, a separate youth locker room, and a central lounge with desk space, basically a place built for people who want to hoop and then take a Zoom call.
How it works: members book structured games through Crosscourt’s app instead of showing up to a public court and hoping for a run. LA Pricing ranges from $49 a session to $249 a month for unlimited access. It’s targeting the same adults and professionals who already pay for Barry’s or Equinox, except the workout is a 5-on-5.
Founder and CEO Charles Seltzer says the LA traction is what’s funding the next city. Gonzalez, who now calls Miami home, framed his investment as a bet on the city itself, not just the concept.
Mr Miami Take: This is bigger than a gym opening. This is a revolution in the making. Anyone who loves basketball knows the actual sport, the pickup version, has been broken for years, the run-down courts, the guy who never passes, the two-hour wait for a ten-minute game. Crosscourt is the fix, and it’s arriving in Miami at exactly the moment the city needs it. With Giannis now calling Miami home, basketball culture here is about to get serious in a way it never has, and it deserves an actual home. Not a park. Not a rec center. A place built with the same intention as Barry’s or Equinox, where every person who’s ever dreamed of being an all-star gets to feel like one again.
Little River is about to become one of the coolest places on the planet.
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Craig Robins Dacra Breaks Ground on Another Iconic Building
The Design District’s expansion train has no brakes, and Craig Robins just added another car.
Robins’ Miami Design District Associates and New York private equity firm Raycliff Capital secured a $125 million construction loan from Credit Agricole to build Sweetbird North, an eight-story, 120,500-square-foot office-and-retail project at 95 Northeast 40th Street. The site, 17,000 square feet that’s sat mostly vacant as pop-ups and food carts for years, will finally get a real building: 92,000+ square feet of office space, 22,500 square feet of retail, designed by Norwegian architecture firm Snøhetta.
Construction is slated to start this month and wrap by early 2028. The land already secured a $31.1 million permit.
MDDA is a joint venture between Robins’ Dacra, L Catterton Real Estate (backed by LVMH’s Bernard Arnault), and Brookfield Properties. Raycliff, led by Bippy Siegal, has become a recurring name across Robins’ newest moves, from the Fouquet’s branded condo tower and hotel (David Chipperfield designed, 143 units, prices starting at $1.8M) to a 20-story, 107-unit tower already under construction nearby.
Translate the pattern: the Design District isn’t just adding stores anymore. It’s building an actual live-work-shop neighborhood, office towers for the creative and financial tenants who want proximity to Chanel and Hermès, condos for the people who want to live where they shop, and now Sweetbird North filling in the office gap directly across from Alo and Alice + Olivia.
Mr. Miami Take: Robins built the Design District’s reputation on retail and taste. What he’s building now is infrastructure, and infrastructure is a signal of permanence, not a phase. When a neighborhood goes from “luxury shopping district” to “place people build their offices,” that’s not district expansion. That’s a district becoming a city within the city.
Taste is not for sale. But apparently, office space in the Design District is worth $125 million.
The Boucherie Is Not So Grand and Las’ Lap Has Its Last Lap
Two of the buzziest imports of 2025 just went dark for summer.
La Grande Boucherie, the Parisian-brasserie-meets-steakhouse that took over 81 Washington Ave and turned a historic Art Deco shell into a golden-age-of-Paris fantasy, is calling it a “brief seasonal pause.” Translation, per the website: every season has its own rhythm. Sure. Meanwhile OpenTable has it flagged as temporarily closed, and there’s no reopening date on the calendar.
A few blocks over, Las’ Lap, the Caribbean-inspired restaurant-and-nightlife spot that brought New York flavor south, posted the same story on Instagram: closed for summer.
Both restaurants landed in Miami Beach in 2025 as marquee New York arrivals. Both are now sitting out the city’s slowest stretch. And both are doing it under the same industry-approved euphemism, “seasonal pause” that South Florida hospitality has been leaning on for a few summers running. Byblos. Lucky Cat. Sereia. It’s less a trend now than a ritual.
Mr. Miami Take: A pause is not a permanent close until it is, but the summer math is brutal, and “we’ll be back” only means something if you actually come back. Grand Boucherie might have a shot at returning since its part of a larger company, but we are pretty sure Las Lap has seen its last lap.
Reported by our favorite reporter, Olee Fowler, for Miami New Times.
And that’s what’s good, Miami.
Keep your SPF high and your standards higher.
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