The design notice
Handel Architects dated its notice 16 April 2026. The groundbreaking it recorded took place on 8 April. The tower rises 50 stories as Banco Santander's new regional office. Rilea Group is development advisor and project manager. Coastal Construction is the builder.
The notice carries no square footage, no delivery date, no street address and no cost.
Santander published the commercial terms on 8 April 2026. The building spans approximately 1.6 million square feet across office, retail, dining and wellness. It includes seven levels of amenities and a sky terrace restaurant above Brickell Avenue. Target delivery is 2029.
The bank will occupy part of the building with its staff and Santander Private Banking. Third-party tenants take the rest.
What the site carried before
Santander bought the 14-story building at 1401 Brickell Avenue for $114 million in 2008. In 2017 the bank explored a sale to developers and stopped. It announced the rebuild in 2024 with a 40-story plan of 613,000 square feet of office and 108,000 square feet of retail.
The approved scheme grew. Bisnow reported on 2 September 2026 that the building now runs 50 stories with more than 1 million square feet, 165,000 square feet of retail, 560,000 square feet of marketable office, the bank's own space and a multilevel parking deck.
Blanca Commercial Real Estate holds the leasing assignment on that 560,000 square feet. Triple-net asking rents start below $200 per square foot, Tere Blanca told Bisnow. The most sought floors at this tower and at Citadel's are expected to clear $300.
The bank and Blanca both declined to say how much of the building Santander will take.
The vacancy number and the market behind it
Brickell carried 11.8 percent Class-A direct vacancy on Colliers data in September 2026. Asking rents averaged $93.03 per square foot, second in Miami to Coconut Grove's near-$100 average.
Brokers reading that number describe a shortage of the right space. JLL executive managing director Steven Hurwitz said the market is "desperate for new space". Leasing fell 20 percent this year from its 2022 and 2023 level, on CoStar data reported by The Real Deal.
Developers added more than 1 million square feet since 2024 on Colliers data. Most of it is boutique space built for smaller tenants.
Large requirements do not fit that inventory. Apollo Global Management sought roughly 250,000 square feet for a second headquarters, found no Miami tower with that space and chose Austin. Cushman & Wakefield executive managing director Andrew Trench said tenants seeking 200,000 to 500,000 square feet have tabled their Miami moves.
Why owner-occupancy cleared the prelease wall
Construction lenders typically require a preleased anchor. Related and Swire planned One Brickell City Centre at 1.6 million square feet in 2022, held a groundbreaking and found no tenant for enough space. The Melo Group bought the site for $211.5 million in May 2025.
Santander and Citadel carry their own tenancy. Hurwitz said the buildings under construction are generally owner-occupied "because they come with their own tenancy".
Citadel plans a 1.7-million-square-foot tower across 54 stories at 1201 Brickell Bay Drive. The company will take about 560,000 square feet, an increase after it dropped a 212-key hotel from the scheme. Completion is targeted for the early 2030s.
The two buildings add more than 1 million square feet of office for outside companies, delivering in 2029 and 2031. Colliers dates the previous block of that size in Brickell to the Great Recession.
The test the corridor faces
Supply arrives in one cluster at rents the city has not carried. A tenant needing 200,000 square feet or more will have somewhere to look in 2029 for the first time since 830 Brickell delivered.
Two outcomes move the reading. If leasing returns toward its 2022 rate before 2029, the block absorbs. If the two towers lease less than half their third-party space by 2028, they land into a thin tenant pool.
Every competing landlord prices against that 2029 block and its $300 floors.
What it means for the hotels
The programme adds office space, retail, dining, wellness and a restaurant. It adds no hotel rooms.
Room demand arrives with the tenants, and the first tenants arrive in 2029. The construction phase already sits inside current occupancies.
Brickell has attracted the bank and the hedge fund. The next test is filling the space each of them leaves for other tenants.