WGM Wellness Tour: Auratherapy Wynwood, Vibrate Higher
The first stop on the What’s Good Wellness Tour was Auratherapy, a new studio in Wynwood for aura and energy wellness. You don’t come here to get your blood work read. You come to get your energy read. When you walk into a room, people feel it before you say a word, or as they say energy doesn’t lie.
The experience begins before anyone reads anything. You step through the portal, and Wynwood falls away behind you. The noise drops, the light softens, and the space takes over. Every surface, every color and every scent is considered, and the room feels designed to slow you down and open you up. It’s minimalist serenity and you feel it in your body before you can put it into words.
Inside, I sat down with Jim Levinson, the expert energy reader who I jokingly refer to as “the guru.” He and founder Laura McCann literally wrote the book on auras (you can get their book here). A few deep breaths, my right hand raised, and there it was on the screen: my aura, 360 degrees around me in green, yellow and blue.
Jim read it like a chart. The green at the top is my mental state, which he says is social and shows the potential to be a healer. My chakras were almost perfectly aligned, with nothing blocking. The highest was my vision chakra, where you get your downloads from the divine. My solar plexus came in very high too, which points to an analytical nature and someone who gets things done. Vision plus execution. That explains a lot.
The studio recently opened for a preview with a tea ceremony led by Miami ceremonialist Tara Benmeleh, a ritual that set the intention for everything this space is about.
So what did I learn? Listen to your mom. She always told me I had great energy, and it turns out she was right. Don’t miss your opportunity to book your reading, they get booked up very quickly in advance. And btw they also do offsite events and parties, coolest Miami party amenity ever?
Auratherapy is a life altering experience, clearly the next phase of wellness.
Find your frequency. Book your aura reading here.
Good Company Interview: Carlos Rosso, Founder and CEO of Rosso Development
In 1990, Carlos Rosso was building the airport in Dubai. There was nothing there but sand. Thirty five years later he is doing the same thing in Midtown. Less sand. More padel.
Carlos is the founder and CEO of Rosso Development and the former president of condo development at Related Group. By his own count he has had his hands on roughly 20,000 condos in South Florida. “It’s an absurd number,” he told me. He’s right. Now he is building the Standard Residences and Midtown Park, which is about to double the size of a neighborhood most people couldn’t find on a map twenty years ago.
The Summer Job That Lasted Ten Years
Born in Argentina. Architecture school. A scholarship for an eight week summer job in Belgium that turned into ten years across Belgium, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Cairo. Then a master’s at MIT, a chance meeting with Jorge Pérez, and a first job at Related counting linear feet of sewer pipe in Tamarac while his MIT classmates collected Goldman bonuses.
Pérez sponsored his visa. Carlos got his green card. His eldest son now works at Related. The circle of life, Miami edition.
“George made me American.”
The Rules
The advice he gives his son is the best career advice I’ve heard this year, and it’s free. Be first in and last out. Carry a list everywhere. If you have nothing to do, ask the busiest person in the room how you can help. Then learn to read the tea leaves, which he calls “half intellectual and half gut.”
In development, timing beats location.
“You can lose money, but you cannot lose time.”
Two Buckets of Keys
2008 is where Carlos learned what leverage really costs. Related had a $650 million loan on Icon Brickell. They rented a conference room at the InterContinental to renegotiate. The lead lender had already bought out the other participants at a discount. The deal was done before anyone sat down. The answer was no.
So Carlos and Pérez walked in with two buckets holding 1,800 keys, put them on the table, and said the building is yours.
That’s why, when Miami came back in 2010, Related asked buyers for 80% deposits, and why 50% became the standard for Miami preconstruction. New York builds with developer equity. Latin America builds entirely with buyer deposits. Florida lives in the middle. And the banks here now say one thing: show me the buyers.
He has gone all in himself. At 35, with about $500,000 in the bank, he put every dollar into a deal alongside Pérez and lived on credit cards for four months. At 60, you place smarter bets. But you have to do it once.
“You can do that when you are 35.”
Why Midtown?
Midtown was master planned from day one. The Cayre family, bought it in 2002 and entitled the whole thing with Bernard Zyscovich. Power lines buried. Fifteen foot sidewalks. Mature trees. It sits at plus 14 feet, the highest neighborhood in Miami. It never floods, so lobbies and storefronts sit right at sidewalk level, like New York. You can’t cut through it, so cars slow down, and retailers love slow cars. Zero retail vacancy.
Full sidewalks make a safe neighborhood. Then Carlos dropped this: the biggest tenant group in Midtown is single women. That’s an urban planning lecture I would actually attend.
“And then men always follow the women. And what happens when that happens? Rents go up.”
The Walmart Site
Midtown Park sits on five acres, the biggest urban site left in Miami. It was supposed to be a 300,000 square foot Walmart. The neighbors fought it until the fifth largest company in America sold and left.
When Carlos put it under contract, the neighbors knocked on his door with a list so he wouldn’t meet the same fate. Open space. Shade. Ground floor life. Sports and wellness. A walk through to Wynwood under tree canopy. “A little bit of the Design District.” Build as many units as you want above it, because they know their retail depends on people living upstairs.
The list matched his. So phase one opens with a country club: ten padel courts, open to everyone. Plus 60,000 square feet of office. No hotel.
“How do you eat an elephant? In little pieces.”
Selling Miami
Years ago he pitched the Standard to Pérez for Paraiso Bay. Pérez passed. Too weird, not luxury enough. Carlos did it anyway at Rosso, in the middle of COVID, with New Yorkers pouring south. 228 units. 75% sold in two weeks.
For Midtown Park he brought in Proper, because Proper runs the Shelborne and he wanted a line straight to South Beach. Same pitch as the Standard: walk Midtown, see the trees, see the real people living there.
His hidden gem is Reco, in South Miami.
“When I sell a condo in Midtown Park, the first thing I need to do is sell Miami. It’s not because of my bathroom or my kitchen.”
The What’s Good 10 Questions
Lives: South Miami, unincorporated, between Pinecrest and Coral Gables. 22 years in Miami
Morning: Tennis Monday, Wednesday and Friday. A trainer at home with his wife Tuesday and Thursday. Then the sites
Coffee:
]Black, no sugar
Loves most about Miami: “Pure potential.”
Advice to his younger self: “Do it again.”
How he defines success: “Sweat and luck.”
Dream collaborator: Jorge Pérez, as partners. “I think we’re going to do something together very soon.” Noted
What he believes: Effort, and pushing yourself through the uncomfortable situations
Happy place: Home, with his family
Favorite quote: “Better be lucky than good.”
Mr. Miami Take
New York is concrete. Florence is finished. Miami is still clay, and every few years it sheds its skin and gets bigger. Carlos is one of the people with his hands in it. What I respect most is that he listens. The neighbors handed him a list and he built it. Walmart had more money than anyone in that room and still had to leave. In this city, the neighborhood wins, and the developers who understand that are the ones who get to shape it. He’s self made, and it shows. There’s no shortcut to that kind of clarity. You have to do it to know it. See you on the padel court, Carlos. Coffee’s on me.
Watch the full Good Company interview with Carlos Rosso here:
That’s what’s good, Miami.
Keep your SPF high and your standards higher.
See you at the beach.
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