Starwood Tops Off Miami Beach HQ as Financial Firms Migrate to South Florida

Starwood Property Trust’s new Miami Beach headquarters has been topped off, the latest sign South Florida is a strong options for financial companies.

Starwood moved its headquarters in 2018 from Connecticut to South Beach, where it took over a building at Washington Avenue and 16th Street. Its new six-story headquarters at 2340 Collins Ave. is due to be completed late next year.

The 144,430-square-foot building will include 8,000 square feet of ground-floor retail and a 277-space garage. This is the first Class A office building to be built in Miami Beach in at least a decade.

The Sunshine State and especially South Florida have gained traction, and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is the latest to consider a South Florida outpost. The asset management arm, which accounts for about one quarter of the revenue at the 41,000-employee company, reportedly is looking.

The Blackstone Group Inc. and Elliott Management Corp. plan South Florida offices but will keep their New York headquarters, while Icahn Enterprises LP already moved its headquarters to Sunny Isles Beach from New York.

Starwood Property Trust is an affiliate of the Starwood Capital Group private investment company, which has $60 billion of assets under management. Starwood Property Trust focuses on real estate investment.

Billionaire Barry Sternlicht, Starwood Capital’s co-founder, in a news release thanked the building designer, lender, construction team and others.

“We look forward to calling this incredible city our home for years to come,” said Sternlicht, Starwood Capital chairman and CEO.

Integra Investments, a Miami-based company that performs acquisitions, development, construction management and asset management of real estate ventures in Florida, is a development partner in the headquarters building.

Integra principal Nelson Stabile touted the design.

“It embodies a modern urban lifestyle just one block from the ocean that is tremendously well-thought out and highly sophisticated in design,” he said in a news release.

The building combines vintage with modern. It’s designed in a style reminiscent of Miami Beach’s  Art Deco architectural style, but it has a modern flavor brought out by a glass façade.

The building also will incorporate nature and the outdoors with a fourth-floor garden, outdoor wood-clad cabana-type seating on each floor, office amenities on terraces and open paseos.

Gensler is the architect, Clive Lonstein Inc. designed the interior, and CoastalBrodson, a joint venture of Coastal Construction and Brodson Construction Inc., is the general contractor.

Starwood Property will occupy a little more than half of the office space, and the remaining space is to be leased to others. It already is approaching full occupancy.

As for other financial companies attracted to South Florida, Icahn Enterprises led by Carl Icahn is farthest along after opening its new headquarters in August across a floor and a half at the Milton Tower.

Blackstone plans a 50,000-square-foot tech office either in Miami, either in downtown or Brickell, for about 215 employees.

Investment manager Elliott Management, led by Paul Elliott Singer, is to open a West Palm Beach office in the next year as part of a larger expansion that includes adding an office in Connecticut.

The Sunshine State is attractive since it has no income tax and wasn’t hurt when the 2017 federal tax overhaul limited deductions for state and local taxes.

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