Amazon is seeking 50,000 square feet of office space in the Miami area in a move that follows founder Jeff Bezos's decision to purchase two side-by-side properties totaling $147 million at Miami’s “billionaire bunker" at Indian Creek Village.
An Amazon spokesperson confirmed to CoStar News that the company was searching for leasable space in the Miami area. While Bezos announced his move to the Magic City at the beginning of the month to be closer to family and Blue Origin operations at Cape Canaveral, Amazon said its decision to find new office space in the region is a part of the company’s organic growth strategy, and the search had already commenced prior to Bezos’ announcement.
The deal would be Amazon’s first direct office lease in the Miami area, where the company occupies a number of “serviced-office locations” managed by flexible-office and coworking providers, the spokesperson told CoStar News. Amazon currently employs more than 400 corporate and tech employees across existing locations in the Miami area.
The city was a finalist for Amazon's so-called HQ2 second headquarters before losing out to Arlington, Virginia, in 2019. While Miami failed to secure Amazon at the time, the company’s recent announcement makes it the latest in a long line of big-name corporate expansions and relocations to the city that include Ken Griffin’s Citadel, Microsoft, Blackstone, Apollo Global Management, Anaplan, LeverX and dozens of others that span the gamut of tech, finance and other industries.
According to the Miami-Dade Beacon Council, the county's official public-private economic development partnership, Miami-Dade County secured the commitment of 51 companies looking to expand or relocate to the area during its 2022-2023 efforts. The number is just shy of the 57 commitments secured the year prior, between 2021-2022.
The growth of high-quality office users has bolstered the region’s rents and driven overall availability below 2019 levels, notes a third-quarter office report from the brokerage firm CBRE. Similarly, CoStar data shows that high-quality offices in Brickell today see rents average $84 per square foot. Immediately north in the downtown market, the number is $60 per square foot. The cost has driven new submarkets to receive hitherto unheard-of attention and elevated Wynwood, once a dilapidated industrial district, to see a swathe of new construction that receives $75 per square foot for the best office space in the neighborhood.
As a result of the demand, existing office towers in the city's central business district continue to see new leases, and a number of new high-end towers are in development across Miami’s Downtown and Brickell neighborhoods, and include notables such as 830 Brickell, One Brickell City Center.
For Amazon, the search for new office space adds to its already considerable industrial footprint, with a number of logistics and distribution centers scattered across the state. The company maintains 90 warehouse, distribution and logistics sites across Florida, CoStar data shows.