MIAMI | Banco Santander Tower | 840 feet | 256 m |
 

Friday, January 1, 2010
Details emerge about Banco Santander’s plans for office tower

South Florida Business Journal - by Oscar Pedro Musibay

The architects behind Miami’s iconic Espirito Santo building are working to design an 84-story glass tower for Spain-based Banco Santander’s site on Brickell Avenue.
New York City-based Khon Pederson Fox Associates (KPF) won a contest to design the building, the company confirmed. But Banco Santander officials have wanted to keep the details of the Miami project under wraps.

Interviews with Miami Commission Chairman Marc Sarnoff and his staffers, who met recently with a bank official, have provided some preliminary details of the project. An interview with Ignacio Permuy, president of Coral Gables-based Terra Architecture, the local architect working on the project, also fleshed out details.

If the building were built at 1401 Brickell Ave., as envisioned today, it would rise to about 840 feet. The 84-story tower would include a 123-foot tall parking podium at the base. Above the parking podium would be the office space, which would be designed at 14.6 feet per floor, slightly higher than what is allowed under Miami 21, the city’s new zoning code. Miami 21 doesn’t go into effect until May.
Permuy, who designed the unbuilt One Bayfront Plaza for Tibor Hollo, said Banco Santander is working with the city to determine whether the current code or Miami 21 will suit the project better. If the bank gets its approval prior to May, the site’s development rights will be vested under the old code.
Banco Santander currently occupies a 1970s-era, 237,000-square-foot, 14-story building at 1401 Brickell Ave., which is directly north of the Espirito Santo building.

The current office building, which the bank bought for $114 million in 2008, would be knocked down to make way for the new skyscraper.
Antonio Julio Covas, of the Miami office of bank affiliate Santander Global Property, and KPF architects met with Sarnoff on Dec. 16 to discuss the proposed office and retail tower. KPF principal Lloyd Sigal, city Planning Director Ana Gelabert-Sanchez and Greenberg Traurig’s Adrienne Pardo, a zoning specialist, were in the meeting, as was Permuy, according to a sign-in sheet for the meeting.
All except Permuy were unavailable for comment. A planning department spokesman acknowledged the city has had preliminary discussions with the bank about the project.

Despite having 2 million square feet of new office under construction between Miami’s downtown core and Brickell Avenue plus continued downward pressure on office rents, bank officials were eager to start construction, Sarnoff and staffers said.

Financing would not be a problem even as debt markets remain frozen, Covas explained during the meeting.
Said Sarnoff staffer Bert H. Gonzalez about the bank official’s comments: “They said, `We are the second most profitable bank in the world so financing should not be a problem.’”

http://assets.bizjournals.com/story_...2931-0-0-1.jpg

^ tallest in the rendering between the Espirito Santos & the Four Seasons.

http://southflorida.bizjournals.com/...04/focus6.html

Hmmm...nice.

I didn't expect this.

Slightly off topic, why would the Miami 21 code limit floor heights?

Yeah what the fuck!? Why would a positive feature such as that (healthy floor heights) be a bad thing, and even more grotesque, why will their appear to be zoning against it? As cool as I think this project looks, 840 feet for 84 floors is really short, ESPECIALLY for office floors...

there is obviously some discrepency in the article because at 84 stories and at 14.6 feet per floor would put this tower at over 1200 feet and the FAA will never permit that in that area. I'm banking on the 840 foot height instead.
As for why the new Miami21 plan would limit floor heights I'm unsure at this moment.

Probably going to be closer to 60 floors than 84 with that floor height. The 840 feet is usually the accurate one, newsies usually just make up floor counts on a 10 foot per floor basis.

Miami21 would limit floor height because its height regulations deal with floor counts rather than heights. For example they may allow 20-story buildings but they put a cap on floor heights to prevent 20 story, 700 foot tall buildings in an area where they intented what they expected to be about 250 foot tall buildings.

They have a lot to learn... :rolleyes: Also, it would make more sense to limit the total height of the building, not floor heights if that is such a big deal to them. I do agree w/the 60 floor figure, that does sound a lot more accurate. I'd even go as few as 55 floors for that matter...

Miapolis, A Dream To Create A New Tallest Tower
 

Wasn't expecting this.
Nice tower for Brickell.

:dead:

Earlier design for this site - http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=160485




The building currently on the site.

Wow thats real nice. Hope it goes through. Gotta love the Miami skyline. Keeps getting better...

:yes:

60 stories works just about perfectly for 840' (at the given floor heights).

12 floors of parking = 123'
48 floors of office at 14.6'/floor = 701'
Parapet top = ~16'
Total = 840'

Somewhere between 900,000 to 1,200,000SF leasable square footage. Even with Banco Santander taking maybe 1/2 that, that's still alot of floor area to lease out.

It would be nice to actually see this tower get built.

Would much rather see a tower like this built on one of the numerous empty lots or suburban-style developments that still exist in the downtown/Brickell area.

^Not all of the proposals for this site involved tearing down the original building.. nor were they all wannabee Tour EDFs..

It is disappointing to see this is the winning entry, especially after having seen some of what could have been (one proposal spanned over 200' across/over the original building with cores on either side leaving a void between the new and old buildings (think broadgate exchange house on crack)).

I hope this doesn't get built.. simply for how unoriginal and unimaginative it is.

I'm not so sure it's unoriginal -- may not be groundbreaking but nonetheless a nice addition. I do agree that there are plenty of parking lots in and around Brickell that this tower could rise on while saving the building that is already there, which personally, I think is a nice postmodern addition to a largely glass and white washed skyline.

KPF picks project design manager
 

Finally some news on this project! Looks like the bank is moving forward with plans to build this tower.

KPF has chosen Charles Ippolito to manage the design of a new office tower for Banco Santander in Miami. He previously served as Job Captain for the Espirito Santo Plaza project which is across the street from the proposed tower.

http://www.kpf.co.uk/bio.asp?id=26

Is this likely to be built? I hope so. It's beautiful, as is Miami.

^ yes since Banco Santander will be financing it themselves.