Miami’s New Train Station Will Be A Victorian Futurist’s Dream

All Aboard Florida wants to build bigger than ever in downtown Miami, according to documents submitted to the city to create a Special Area Plan encompassing the land it owns, posted over on exMiami. Envision a soaring megaproject rivaling Brickell CityCentre wrapped around an elevated train station reached via viaduct, in the middle of downtown. Sounds like Batman. Or those baroque Victorian imaginings of the city of the future. Where do the flying pirate ships go?

The new Special Area Plan, which AAF is calling the Downtown Intermodal District, gives some details of the station complex, without revealing any actual designs by architecture firm Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill. Station platforms will be above grade, elevated above cross streets and thereby minimally interrupting existing cross traffic, with towers above that. There will also be some development below grade, and under city streets. The station and its towers will have about 1.5 million square feet of office space, almost a million square feet/785 units of residential, 495,000 square feet/820 hotel rooms, 450,000 square feet of retail, and a 63,000 square foot intercity passenger rail station and concourse. It will have (only) 3,730 parking spaces, a significant reduction from what is required under the zoning code. But hey, the zoning code requires too much parking, especially for a city-within-a-train-station-within-a-city, anyways.