Two real estate developers based in Miami utilize their educational background in the humanities and the arts to inspire their current community development projects.
Craig Robins, president and CEO of real estate development company Dacra, earned a degree at Oxford University in oriental studies, and president of Swire Properties Kieran Bowers studied art before law school. “I wanted to become an art dealer, but it would have been impractical [as a career],” Robins said at the Urban Land Institute Miami Investor Symposium in late October 2018. Robins sees individual properties as part of a greater whole, and in each project, he seeks to answer the question, “How can I make the [entire] neighborhood more valuable?” he said.
For Bowers, head of U.S. operations for Hong Kong–based Swire, the company’s most ambitious project in Miami to date is Brickell City Centre, a 4.9 million-square-foot mixed-use project on which the first phase of construction was completed in 2016. Located in Miami’s Brickell neighborhood, the $1.05 billion development has become a Miami landmark. It sits on three city blocks and includes a five-star hotel, EAST, Miami; two class A office towers; two luxury residential towers; and a 500,000-square-foot (46,500 sq m) retail center. Phase two of the project, if approved, will have 972 residential units in two towers and nearly 90,000 square feet (8,400 sq m) of commercial space, among other features.
