Luxury condo developer Gil Dezer turned heads when he proposed a Porsche-themed high-rise in South Florida, offering units with their own personal car elevators, the patented Dezervator. He turned more heads when the building opened in 2017 and he had sold all 132 units in the 60-story tower.
Executives at Volkswagen Group, which had purchased Porsche, were so smitten with the project when they attended the opening that Dezer said they offered to let him pick from another of the automaker's lux brands for his next tower. Lamborghini? Bugatti? He chose the Bentley.
“We said, well, Bentley is synonymous as the most luxurious car company in the world. Let's make the Bentley tower, the Bentley of condominiums. That's really where it came about,” said Dezer, adding “you see Bentley's everywhere" in Miami.
Watch Gil Dezer walk you through the model space:
The 62-story tower is being planned for a 2.4-acre oceanfront site at 18401 Collins Ave. in Sunny Isles Beach by Dezer Development through a partnership with Bentley Motors. About 82 of its 216 units have been sold so far, Dezer said. Prices start at $5.6 million, with units spanning between 3,500 square feet and 9,000 square feet.
The homage to Bentley will be ever-present in the residences. In a model of a future unit, furnishings from the Bentley Home collection feature the iconic Winged B emblazoned over bedroom headboards or stitched on pillowcases, towels and bathrobes. Kintsugi-inspired wood and copper accents evoke Bentley’s EXP 100 GT concept car, while the diamond motif, a signature of Bentley car interiors, can be found in the tower’s glass panel façade to interior light fixtures and bathroom tiling.
The project is planned for less than half a mile from where Dezer Development completed Porsche Design Tower.
Like the Porsche tower, the Bentley Residences would have car elevators for residents to park directly in their unit's garage, similar to a single-family home with an attached garage but hundreds of feet in the sky and with views of the Atlantic Ocean and Intracoastal Waterway.
Each unit would have its own infinity pool, outdoor kitchen and outdoor shower in what Dezer Development calls a first for South Florida.
Depending on the unit, Bentley residents would be able to park up to four vehicles in their condo. Whereas Porsche Design Tower allows only two or four vehicles, depending on the unit, on every other floor, the upgraded elevator system at Bentley Residences can accommodate up to four cars per unit on every floor.
Dezer said his company and Bentley are working with stereo company Naim to allow residents to pull into their units, shut off their car, and seamlessly continue the music from their car stereo into the residence, providing “real connectivity to the apartment.”
Bentley is also offering electric vehicle charging amenities, which would help determine the most effective charging times and dovetail with Bentley going fully electric by 2025, Dezer said.
Bentley Residences, Porsche Design Tower and the Aston Martin Residences, which is being developed in downtown Miami by G&G Developments as the city’s second-tallest tower when completed at year end, are some of the first fully branded U.S. towers from luxury automakers.
Other automakers are also beginning to develop residential properties. Fiat, owned by Jeep-maker Stellantis, said it's teaming up with Unlmtd Real Estate to open an apartment project with 300 units called Fiat House in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Fiat House is slated to open in early 2024, coinciding with the launch of Stellantis' first battery electric-vehicle offering in North America. The property is to include an on-site car-sharing fleet of all-electric Fiat 500e vehicles.
“They really love the idea of connectivity," Dezer said of car companies. "The automotive brands today, because of where they are going, are going in on the lifestyle side. They're designing the cars that will hold that set of golf clubs or will hold those rackets or whatever the case is, just to create that lifestyle and extend the lifestyle so it's not just driving a car anymore.”
The Bentley condo project's timeline has been somewhat slower than anticipated since it was first announced in 2021. An expected construction start of early 2023 has shifted to a “moving target” between December and January, Dezer said, based on when final permitting comes through from city officials at Sunny Isles Beach, which is about 19 miles north of downtown Miami.
“It takes time to sell,” Dezer said. "My philosophy is don't build these projects if you can't do the pre-sales. But the pre-sales are happening and buyers are coming."
However, wider economic uncertainty has begun to impact profitability, with interest rates in particular “eating away” at profits, Dezer said.
“Our profit margins are not looking as good as they should. There's a bit of hope that things will flip around, but business is not based on hope. They could get better. It's not [so bad that we would] say, ‘Hey, we're not going forward.’ We're still going to go forward. The good and the bad about these projects is they don't happen in one day," Dezer said.
For the Record
Bentley's in-house designers Brett Boydell and Chris Cooke have led the design of the project, in addition to Sieger Suarez Architects. Dezer Platinum Realty is in charge of sales and marketing.