Piling under way at 128 Southwest 7th Street
Suffolk Construction broke ground on the Miami Starlite in January 2026. The contractor confirmed the date in a LinkedIn post that Florida YIMBY quoted on 31 March 2026. Piling and foundation work were under way at that point.
The parcel carried the Miami Starlite Motel. Focus and Group Fox Management are the developers, and Gensler is the architect.
The groundbreaking Suffolk dates to January
Crews had finished the test piles by the report date. Production piles were started, and permanent and temporary wells were installed. The account describes the work moving deeper into the foundation phase.
The report carries no date for the start of piling, no date for its finish and no notice of a tower crane.
The January date rests on one public confirmation. Suffolk posted it on LinkedIn and the outlet quoted the post. No permit record, developer statement or press release carrying that date appears in the report.
The foundation team around the contractor
Keller began the pile work. Langan Engineering & Environmental Services holds the geotechnical engineering role. Fenagh Engineering and Testing handles materials testing, threshold inspections and special inspections. Suffolk sits above the three.
No contract value, fee or schedule from any of the four appears in the report.
Thirty-nine storeys and 517 homes
Florida YIMBY reports a tower of 39 stories with 517 residential units. The same report puts the gross figure near 800,000 square feet. The site sits on the western edge of Brickell, near the Miami River corridor.
The report places the project among several large residential developments moving west through Brickell. It records former low-rise properties giving way to taller mixed-use and multifamily construction.
Eight hundred thousand square feet divided by 517
Two ratios follow from the published counts. Eight hundred thousand square feet divided by 517 homes gives about 1,547 square feet of gross building area per unit. Sixteen thousand square feet of indoor amenity divided by 517 gives about 31 square feet per home.
Both figures are arithmetic on the two published counts, and both treat the whole area as serving the 517 homes. Neither accounts for parking, back of house or the podium.
The 800,000 square feet is a gross figure for the whole building. The report gives no breakdown by use, so the per-unit figure is an upper bound on the area any one home occupies.
The podium, the balcony lines and the deck
Renderings show rounded floor plates and horizontal balcony lines. A podium carries a landscaped amenity deck, drawn with a resort-style pool, dense planting, shaded seating and an outdoor setting above the neighbourhood.
The indoor programme runs to about 16,000 square feet. It lists a lobby, coworking spaces, a fitness centre, pet amenities, multiple pools and outdoor lounges.
No amenity operator, retail tenant or restaurant brand appears in the report.
No delivery schedule exists
No completion date is published. No delivery year is published. The report records the foundation stage and stops there, and a news index search for the project returned no report later than 31 March 2026.
A property watch cannot date a handover from this record. It can date the stage.
What this watch records next
Four items will move the watch forward: a notice that piling is complete, a tower crane permit, the start of vertical construction on the podium, and a delivery window from the developer or the contractor.
Three items stay open. The unit mix carries no bedroom counts. The capital stack carries no cost, loan or contract sum. The tenure of the 517 homes is unpublished.
The report describes the building as residential and multifamily. Until a document names the tenure, the watch records a 39-story building with 517 homes and no delivery schedule.