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On track: Details for downtown Miami railway hub are revealed

Work has now begun on a new station at the same spot that will bring back passenger train service — this time between Miami and Orlando.

Though the overall plan for the rail and business complex was disclosed last year, executives of All Aboard Florida recently described specific new details on how the station will operate and what its associated towers and buildings will contain. They also provided a timeline for construction of various structures that will make up the station and business hub they call MiamiCentral.

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Three towers will rise from the top of the elevated platform, Sanders said.

On the north end, a 10-story tower will house offices. On the south end, two other towers — one 39 stories and the other 33 — will be built for apartments. One of the towers will contain 450 units and the other 350.

Residents will have amenities that include pools, dog-walking areas, a jogging track and a basketball court.

The elevated platform and the towers rising from the top are all part of project’s first phase of development, along with a separate building just to the west of MiamiCentral where All Aboard Florida will house its headquarters, a parking lot with 1,181 spaces for passengers, more office space, and retail outlets.

On the elevated platform itself, All Aboard Florida envisions rail tracks for its Miami-Orlando passenger trains and for Tri-Rail, which is planning to operate commuter service out of the MiamiCentral station.

Workers are now setting up the foundation for the structure, drilling the holes where massive beams will be installed to hold elevated tracks. Sanders said he expects the beam work to be completed by November. Then workers will begin building the towers. Under the current plan, MiamiCentral will open by the end of 2016, Sanders said.

The office tower and the residential towers are expected to be completed by 2017.

For now, the contractor, Suffolk, is drilling 1,680 piles into the ground, some going 60 feet deep and others 115 feet, to support the elevated structure.

“We will have four rigs, a rig on each block, drilling piles and filling them up with concrete every day, so the entire building can sit on these fingers that go down into the ground,” Sanders said.

In the second phase of the project, Sanders said, All Aboard Florida plans to build a tower just south of the elevated station to house a hotel and more residential apartments. The work is expected to begin in mid- to late-2017.

When completed, the hotel-residential tower would rise to about 850 feet, Sanders said.

All Aboard Florida expects to start express passenger train service in two phases. The first is from Miami to Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach in late 2016 and the second to Orlando in 2017.

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