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Sunset Place’s Long Goodbye: South Miami’s Empty Mall Is Still Standing as Its Seven-Tower Replacement Takes Shape
Demolition of the mostly vacant Shops at Sunset Place has slipped to early 2027. But a new $149 million infrastructure district and a plan for 1,513 homes point to a very different Sunset Drive. For a generation of Miami teenagers, Shops at Sunset Place was where Friday night happened: a movie at the 24-screen AMC, a round at the arcade, a few frames at Splitsville. Today the outdoor mall at U.S. 1 and Red Road is largely vacant. A few years ago its directory went blank, and a Spirit Halloween was one of the few storefronts with lights on. It was supposed to be rubble by now. Demolition, once slated for the first quarter of 2026, is now targeted for early 2027, Miami Today reported this week. The plan to replace it, though, keeps moving. Miami-Dade commissioners recently approved the Downtown SoMi Community Development District, a financing tool for roughly $149 million in new streets, utilities and other infrastructure around the site. Seven towers, 1,513 homes The project, approved by the South Miami City Commission in October 2024, calls for seven towers ranging from 12 to 33 stories. Plans include 1,513 residences, a 287-room hotel, a 1,300-seat movie theater, about 202,000 square feet of shops and restaurants, and about 66,000 square feet of offices. The first phase, a condo-hotel and new streets, is targeted for around 2029. There’s a deadline built into the deal. Under its development agreement, the project has to reach $300 million in property value before 2034 to keep the bonus height that lets its tallest towers climb to 33 stories. “The idea there is to get away from the sterile mall kind of feel,” Carlos Villanueva, district sales manager at The Keyes Company’s Coral Gables office, told Miami Today. He called the development “the epicenter of South Miami” in the making and said he was confident it would meet the 2034 target. “The idea there is to get away from the sterile mall kind of feel.” — Carlos Villanueva, The Keyes Company Why the mall never worked Sunset Place opened in 1999 on the site of the Bakery Centre, a 1986 shopping and office complex built where the old Holsum bread bakery once stood. Both projects ran into the same wall: multilevel retail that made it hard to get shoppers past the ground floor. Villanueva said Sunset Place also drew a younger crowd with less money to spend. The sale prices tell the story. Simon Property Group sold the mall in 2015 for $110 million. In 2021, Midtown Opportunities bought it for $65.5 million, a $44.5 million drop in barely five years. What’s still open Not everything has gone dark. As of this summer, AMC, LA Fitness, GameTime, Barnes & Noble and Splitsville were still operating on the property. The delay has been tied to permits and condo presales, according to The Real Deal, and the timing isn’t easy: U.S. mortgage rates jumped to 7.28% last week, their biggest weekly rise in four years. For now, South Miami waits. The mall that was built to be the neighborhood’s heart has spent years as its emptiest block. If the new plan holds, the next version of Sunset Place won’t be a mall at all, but a neighborhood where people actually live.