Amenities include a rooftop helipad, a bank vault, beach club and house car service

By James Leggate

Miami’s newest luxury skyscraper comes with some incredible amenities for residents who can afford its lavish homes.

Construction on One Thousand Museum, also known as the “scorpion tower,” wrapped up in 2019 and residences are hitting the market with prices starting around $5 million. The unique design is one of the final projects by the late famed architect Zaha Hadid, whose best-known works include the London Aquatics Centre from the 2012 Olympics, the Guangzhou Opera House in China and art museums like the Michigan State University Broad Art Museum and the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center.

“We thought of about architects that had not ever done anything in Miami before,” Louis Birdman, one of the developers, told FOX Business. “And we kind of looked to the outside of not only Miami, but the U.S., to see if there was someone we thought might be a real draw to attract attention globally, given that Miami has become this global city, and Zaha was at the top of our list. As it turns out, through a series of circumstances we were able to get in contact with her and she was familiar with the site.”

The 62-story building’s amenities include a rooftop helipad, a bank vault, a nearby private beach club and access to a house car service.

Birdman said the helipad, in particular, has drawn a lot of attention. It’s the only residential tower in Miami to boast one, and helicopters can taxi residents to nearby airports or even as far out as the Bahamas.

“When we were first looking at our market, our potential pool of buyers, and where they were coming from, we knew we’d be seeing buyers from places like Brazil or Mexico or other places where that’s not an uncommon means of getting around for some people,” he said.

The developers partnered with Forbes Travel Guide to train staff in accordance with its five-star rating system. There’s also a gym, yoga facilities, juice bar, private rooms for spa services, movie theater, penthouse-level aquatic center, steam and sauna rooms and the “sky lounge” restaurant with chef Mame Sow, who has been renowned for her pastries and other desserts.

The tower has a total of 84 residences, each encompassing either a half or a whole floor of the building. The available homes include 8,360-square-foot townhomes, 4,635-square-foot half-floor units and 10,335-square-foot full-floor units. They each have between four and six bedrooms.

The average unit size is more than double what’s typical for a downtown real estate market, according to Birdman.

“So what makes this building unique … is the size of our units,” he said. “It was sort of geared toward a different type of buyer that we thought would be interested in downtown.”

Located across the street from a park and overlooking the Biscayne Bay, the building offers views of the ocean and Miami skyline from oversized terraces.

The building is also notable for its unique design and construction. After first seeing Hadid’s design, Birdman said the developers were concerned about whether it could actually be built due to its complexity — it’s worth noting that Japanese officials scrapped a Hadid design for their upcoming Olympic stadium after learning it would have been the most expensive stadium ever built.

In this case, it took about 4,700 glass fiber reinforced concrete panels imported from Dubai via several hundred containers over the course of a couple of years. It was a system that had never before been used for a high-rise building, and was the subject of a PBS documentary.

“It cost a little bit more and it took a little bit more time, but the end result is something very different,” Birdman said. “To try to achieve what we achieved in just conventional concrete and forms, we never would have gotten the design, we wouldn’t have gotten the level of finish on the exterior of the building.”

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