Miami Beach city officials have thrown their support behind a roughly $50 million plan to expand The Rivani, a seven-story mixed-use building at 1691 Michigan Avenue, with a rooftop buildout that would add office space, a full-service restaurant, and padel courts to the South Beach property.
The proposal, led by developer Robert Rivani, calls for approximately 36,000 square feet of new office space to be added to the building's upper levels, along with a 6,000-square-foot restaurant and three rooftop padel courts — the fast-growing racquet sport that has seen surging interest across South Florida in recent years.
The expansion would be layered on top of the existing structure, transforming what is already a mixed-use building into a more vertically intensive commercial destination in the heart of Miami Beach's Michigan Avenue corridor. The corridor has seen renewed developer interest as remote and hybrid work patterns have fueled demand for boutique, amenity-rich office environments outside of traditional downtown cores.
Beyond the physical construction, the plan also involves a significant long-term land deal. Because The Rivani sits on city-owned land, officials are considering extending the ground lease on the underlying parcel through the year 2132 — a roughly century-long commitment that would still require additional approvals before it is finalized. Ground lease extensions of that length are not uncommon for large mixed-use developments on municipally held land, as they provide developers with the long-term certainty needed to justify major capital investments.
The inclusion of padel courts reflects a broader amenity trend reshaping commercial real estate in South Florida. Developers increasingly view sports and recreation programming as a competitive differentiator for office and mixed-use projects, particularly as landlords compete to attract tenants who expect more from their work environments than traditional office space can offer.
Miami Beach, which has long balanced its identity as a global tourism destination with the needs of year-round residents and businesses, has been navigating a wave of redevelopment proposals in recent years. Projects like The Rivani expansion represent a push toward higher-density, higher-value commercial uses in areas already served by existing infrastructure — a pattern urban planners often characterize as building up rather than out.
The $50 million figure represents the estimated cost of the rooftop expansion alone, and the project remains subject to further municipal review and approvals before construction could begin. No timeline for groundbreaking has been publicly announced.
The original reporting on this development was published by Florida YIMBY.