Boom or Bust: Miami

Who came up with the idea of painting a gigantic bright green parabola on the building sides with accents of royal blue in the front and rear? This is horrible for the skyline! First off, we all have to look at it. Secondly, if you own at the Club, and would like to add dark wood or light marble floors to your unit, what do you do about the bright green wall outside in your terrace area? Nothing. What can you do except hate it? There goes any interior décor harmony. It’s even worse for those with partially painted green walls. This is all part of the parabola effect. As if painting the walls this painful color combination is not bad enough, they painted the steel railings too!

There is a much bigger problem with the color scheme: the bright green and blue will fade. The building is near the bay and salt air will diminish the color faster than if it were farther inland. This means that the condominium association will have to paint the building every couple of years. This is no minor cost. We’re talking a couple of hundred thousand dollars per instance. It all could have been avoided with lighter tones. This means that the condominium association will have to fund their reserves to allocate money for the expected repainting of the green parabola exterior. Funding the reserves, although prudent, is not always done in order to reduce monthly maintenance assessments. The alternative means special assessing the unit owners for the funds—not a desirable option. In the case of The Club, the color of the exterior is so bright that if it faded, it would look too terrible to ignore. This means more maintenance and higher assessments for The Club’s unit owners.

Continuing on a negative note, the building’s parking garage is the biggest and nastiest that Brickell has seen in years. It exceeds the height of the neighboring building to the west. There was no effort to cover it, make it more attractive, or compact. Rather it is a blight spot in the beautiful Brickell skyline. For the nasty color scheme, impractical maintenance implications, blah design, and abhorrent parking garage, the Club is by far the most repulsive new building in Brickell. Congrats!