On a bright blue-sky day, Michael Stern is walking me around Brickell, the fast-paced, high-rise financial heart of Miami.
This is where billionaire investor Ken Griffin plans a Foster + Partners-designed mixed-use super-tower for Citadel, his multinational hedge fund that relocated from Chicago in 2022, and where Microsoft has signed a lease on 50,000 sq ft, joining industry titans JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley.
Stern, 45, is a softly spoken ex-New Yorker, hard to hear over Brickell’s constant rumble of traffic, but it’s clear that he plans to make a big noise in this neighbourhood. As CEO of JDS Development Group, he is the developer of two seismic buildings under construction with branded residences for sale: the $1 billion Mercedes-Benz Places Miami and the $800 million 888 Brickell Dolce & Gabbana – Brickell’s largest and tallest developments respectively.
The Manhattan of Miami
‘Brickell is the Manhattan of Miami. It’s the most walkable and dense part of the city, with the most mixed-use buildings, hotels, residences, offices and retail,’ Stern says. ‘It’s the bridge between the great neighbourhoods to the south, Coconut Grove and Coral Gables, and to the north, Miami Beach and the Design District. I live on Miami Beach, and if I’m meeting friends from Coconut Grove, we would probably choose a restaurant in Brickell.’
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He’d have no shortage of options.
Celebrated restaurant brands including Cipriani, Sexy Fish, Komodo (a Pan-Asian offering now also open in Las Vegas and Dallas) and Delilah (of Los Angeles fame and also now in Vegas) have all set up shop here. The neighbourhood’s hotels include a Four Seasons and a Mandarin Oriental. One of America’s finest schools, the Ransom Everglades School, is not in Brickell itself, but just a few minutes’ drive away.
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It’s the combination of business, pleasure and lifestyle, Stern says, that has helped transform the area into one of Miami’s fastest-growing neighbourhoods. Local residents include Jennifer Lopez, the Beckhams and Pharrell Williams.
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‘Miami has emerged as a serious place to conduct business and live year-round, not somewhere just to visit, play and leave,’ Stern says. ‘I’ve had a home here for 15 years but made a permanent move three years ago. A New Yorker heading to Miami post-Covid was not the most original move, but Miami has matured as a city in terms of culture and lifestyle. Post-Covid, it saw 10 years plus of growth in two years.’
A flourishing branded residence scene
South Florida is one of the world’s most active branded residence markets, according to Savills’ 2024-25 Branded Residence Report, second only to Dubai for the number of completed and planned projects. And the number of non-hospitality brands, Mercedes-Benz and Dolce & Gabbana among them, looking for a piece of the action is growing, currently representing 21 per cent of all projects.
‘Miami has been at the forefront of the branded residence movement because it is growing faster than other US cities,’ Stern says. ‘It’s the same with Dubai. Other cities will catch up as interest rates come down. You’ll see a further wave of new branded residences in New York soon too.’
The Savills report highlights a query often asked of non-hospitality brands: while they dedicate much of their focus to integrating elements of their brand into product and design, how can buyers ensure they will also provide a suitable level of service? Stern bats away the question, pointing out that aftersales care at Mercedes-Benz for its car owners is the best in the business.
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‘These brands have spent decades and often billions of dollars over time curating a certain lifestyle, a set of brand guidelines that mean something to their customer,’ he adds.
‘They understand the importance of translating that into residential property and sustaining it.
‘Brands differentiate your building. They tell a story to buyers in a way that is easier for them to understand because they are already familiar with the brand and its ethos. Take Mercedes-Benz Places. When you think of Mercedes, you think of incredible design, supreme engineering and quality construction, and these are great characteristics to apply to a residential building.
‘You have amazing car designers in Stuttgart, working for a brand with credibility and experience, and they will design the curve of your balcony, the shape of the porte cochère, the lighting. That’s exciting.
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‘Or Dolce & Gabbana, one of the leading international fashion houses whose glamour and design ethos is now available in a residential building. And on top of that, the numbers don’t lie. There’s a big premium for branded residences over non-branded if you get the brand right.’
The Savills report estimates that premium at 33 per cent globally.
Pro-business and pro-growth
Stern started his development career as a project manager on sites in Florida before striking out on his own, building spec homes in Miami and large-scale low-rise housing in New York, and building up a company that today counts more than $10 billion of completed developments across the US.
In 2013 he developed Walker Tower in Chelsea, an Art Deco office-to-residential conversion that set new record sales prices in Downtown, before hitting the heights – literally – with the Steinway Tower at 111 W57 Street, a 1,428ft ‘needle tower’ on Manhattan’s Billionaires’ Row.
Buyers of condos there include the aforementioned Ken Griffin, tech entrepreneur Michael Dell… and even King Charles. The building was designed by Gregg Pasquarelli of SHoP Architects, a long-term collaborator on Stern’s projects.
‘Collaborators are the key to executing anything at scale,’ says Stern. ‘We’re building our fifth tower and designing our sixth with Gregg at SHoP. He and I work well together, both able to think in four dimensions, and what makes our collaborations great is that together we do something that really pushes the boundaries of design but is constructable and comes in on a budget and on schedule.’
A successful developer, says Stern, is the conductor of a very complex symphony, managing the many moving parts of a project. ‘You aren’t necessarily expert at everything; you might not be expert at anything; but you do need to pull together the best team to execute your vision.’
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Other regular collaborators include Italian businessman, billionaire and social media sensation Gianluca Vacchi, a partner with Stern on both his Brickell residential projects and also on Sunset Padel, Miami’s first members-only padel club, which opened in 2024.
‘I like what I do because it is super-tangible,’ says Stern. ‘I can drive by a dirt lot, and then a couple of years later watch as the first residents move into a building that we designed and built. There’s something really rewarding about that for me, unlike maybe doing financial derivatives or something more abstract.’
Mercedes-Benz Places Miami is the fastest-selling project in South Florida, says Stern, with buyers of more than 60 nationalities. ‘We sold 100 apartments in the first few weeks of launch, with around a 50:50 split between domestic and international buyers. And because of the mix of apartment sizes and prices – studios up to three bedrooms – we’ve seen a diverse set of buyers, a good mix of ages and of investors and end-users.’
He is already working on two additional Miami projects, both in design stages and both on Miami Beach. How does he see the future of the city?
‘I think you’ll see Miami come into its own as a financial centre. It started during Covid and has really ramped up, but there are still so many opportunities here. The city has excellent government, it’s very pro-business and pro-growth. There are some issues that need to be addressed – more schooling and better public transportation is needed to cope with the extraordinary growth, and more affordable housing – but these are being looked at.
On balance, I think Miami is the best city in the world to be based from, the most attractive place for businesses to relocate and grow.’
This feature first appeared in Spear’s Magazine Issue 94. Click here to subscribe
