Bal Harbour Shops’ Mega-Luxe Expansion Plans Revealed

Curbed Miami

by Sean McCaughan

Bal Harbour Shops, an international symbol par excellence of Miami-style excess, and the most successful mall on the planet, has submitted plans to the Village of Bal Harbour to expand its footprint to the west by 250,000 square feet, mainly where the mall’s parking garage is now.Additions would include a new department store anchor, at least 20 additional specialty boutiques along a new U-shaped mall, and a new house of worship for the mall’s neighbor, the Church by the Sea.

Bal Harbour Shops intends to purchase the existing village hall (where village leaders hold court) to be able to build over it and build a new one, do the same with the Church by the Sea, revamp the mall’s Collins Avenue entranceway, add a linear park along Bal Bay Drive, and construct a lush new entranceway at 96th Street. A less ambitious plan—if the bigger plans don’t fly with city elders—calls for an expansion within Bal Harbour Shops’ existing property lines. Either way, the whole thing will cost about $200 million, with a coming out party in 2016.

  • 96th Street
  • Bal Bay Drive
  • Park Drive
  • Collins Avenue, looking from the north
  • Master Plan

Bal Harbour Shops hired Zyscovitch Architects, Leo A. Daly Architects, Raymond Jungles Landscape Architects, and consulting architects Maria Sellek and Mark Hampton to developer its master plan. And, as if the one mall wasn’t enough for the Whitman family, the mall’s longtime owners are also branching out in a joint venture with Swire Properties to develop the retail portion of Brickell CityCentre.

The expansion plans come as the luxury malling of the Design District lures away some of Bal Harbour’s chicest tenants – including the entire LVMH arsenal. But apparently that’s no matter for Bal Harbour, which has plenty of remaining tenants, all bursting at the seams and begging for more space.

Stanley Whitman, 94, the patriarch of Whitman Family Development, has been asking the village for more space virtually since opening Bal Harbour Shops in 1965. Why all the hustle and bustle for a nonagenarian who has already scaled to the highest precipices of retail success, Curbed wanted to know. “Because I haven’t got anything else to do; nobody else will give me a job,” Stanley says.
—Emily Schmall


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