A major store, grocery, cruise line and housing are coming to Overtown.
See the plans
Afive-year effort to revitalize central Overtown, Miami’s first Black neighborhood but more recently a bystander to the city’s rapid rise, is nearing completion, bringing nearly 1,000 new jobs and several major businesses.
A Target, Ross Dress for Less and Aldi are among stores coming to the Sawyer’s Walk mixed-use real estate development at 249 NW Sixth St., in the historic area.
Sawyer’s Walk, 1.5 million square feet, will also include 578 affordable apartments for seniors , allowing those who had been displaced in recent years to return or those who cannot afford to stay in the neighborhood to remain.
COMMERCIAL PART OF PROPERTY IS FULLY LEASED
SG Holdings has fully booked the property for commercial tenants, Michael Swerdlow, managing partner of Swerdlow Group, said in an interview with the Miami Herald.
“We are 100% committed,” he said of the building’s commercial space.
SG Holdings is a partnership between Swerdlow Group, SJM Partners, and Alben Duffie, and is building the 3.4-acre development. Construction started in June 2021. Swerdlow, who developed Dolphin Mall in West Miami-Dade, said the company expects to receive a certificate of temporary occupancy for the bottom half of the complex —retail and business — by April 1.
A CRUISE COMPANY WILL MOVE INTO THE COMPLEX
The property also has 130,000 square feet of office space, which SG Holdings has leased to the MSC Group for MSC Cruises’ new North American headquarters. The world’s third largest cruise line is building a $350 million new terminal at PortMiami.
MSC Cargo will also move some staff to Overtown, and MSC will invest about $100 million in its new office.
The $300 million Overtown development, which has faced lawsuits and countersuits but now seems in the clear, stems from the Swerdlow Group winning a bid in 2018 to acquire and develop the city-owned space, referred to as Block 55, from the Southeast Overtown/Park West Community Redevelopment Agency. It occupies a full city block between Northwest Second Avenue and Interstate 95 at Sixth Street and had been empty for years. Swerlow initially had to reserve 154 of the apartments to low-income seniors before he expanded the plans.
Overtown was once the center of Miami’s vibrant Black entertainment district. The Lyric Theater, near Sawyer’s Walk, drew performances by Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, and Nat King Cole. Jackie Robinson attended concerts.
But over the years, many residents left the area. The construction of I-95 and I-395 in the 1960s isolated central Overtown and displaced thousands of people.
And it became a retail desert.
Other nearby neighborhoods have seen a real