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| Lincoln Theater rendering, South Miami Beach, FL |
MIAMI BEACH, FL – Miami Beach-based Savitar Realty Advisors
has nearly completed its transformation of the legendary Lincoln Theatre
in the heart of South Beach from a historic movie theater and symphony hall
into a 35,000 square foot mixed-use building located on the pedestrian
promenade known as the Lincoln Road Mall.
The modern retail
establishment scheduled to open in November will house Swedish retailer
H&M’s 30,000 square foot flagship store as well as a number of other
smaller tenants including Swatch, Sabon, 4D Gelato and 100 Montaditos, a
Spanish tapas and sandwich style restaurant with hundreds of European
locations.
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| Cliff Stein, CEO, Savitar |
Owner and developer Cliff Stein, president and CEO of
Miami Beach-based Savitar Realty Advisors, assembled a group of investors and
purchased the building, which spans 150 feet of prime frontage on Lincoln Road,
for $21.5 million in February 2010.
While he says the price of historical adaptation far exceeds usual
construction costs, he believes the return on this unique investment will be a
multiple of the purchase price.
When construction is complete, the developer’s restorative
approach and adaptive design will be a case study in how to redevelop a
prominent historical site which, in this instance, met the rigorous
requirements of both the Miami Beach Historic Preservation Board and highly
desirable international retail tenants.
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| Allen Shulman |
"Taking down
the walls is like peeling back layers of an onion,” said Stein. “You discover
vestiges of the building’s past and then the historical preservation board
tells you what needs to be saved and what needs to be restored. The process is
full of surprises.”
Designed in 1935 by renowned cinema architect Thomas Lamb in
the classic Art Deco style that defines South Beach, the Lincoln Theatre
building originally housed the movie theater, as well as medical offices and a
pharmacy. It closed in the early 1980s and then was purchased in 1988 by the
New World Symphony to serve as a performance hall, music academy and
administrative office. Last year the symphony opened its new South Beach campus
designed by Frank Gehry.
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| Lincoln Road Mall, Miami Beach, FL |
Even after eliminating the slab between the second and third
floors in the original office building to better suit a modern retail
environment, its theatrical and art deco heritage is revealed and apparent.
The protected features of the property include its signature
façade on Lincoln Road, the original theater lobby and various elements
uncovered during the construction process, including original water fountains,
a mirror, coral rock wall tiles and a decorative lobby ceiling. Stein is
resurrecting the overlapping clamshell ceiling in the auditorium, with
backlighting between each overlapping shell, replicating the original ceiling
design of the movie theater.
During World War II,
the building's owner donated the original aluminum marquis to the war effort,
replacing it with a less expensive wood structure. Stein and his architectural
team have replicated the original marquis in stainless steel.
Stein also replaced
a blank concrete wall in the rear of the building along Lincoln Lane with
glass, providing a public view of the interior, which has been designed to
maintain the look and feel of a two-story movie theater.
From the side, the end
of the space re-creates the look of a proscenium. A LED mesh wall, extending
from the auditorium ceiling to the ground floor below, conceals what was once
the stage and will serve as a multi-media screen for H&M, reminiscent of
the movie theater screen that once hung in that space.
“Good adaptive reuse
respects a structure’s history – its story – while creating something
altogether new,” said Allan Shulman, principal of the Shulman +
Associates architectural firm commissioned to design the renovation. “The new
design for the Lincoln Theatre proves that historical structures and commerce
are complementary when a design is carefully conceived.”
Contact:
Pierson Grant Public
Relations
954.776.1999
Savannah Whaley, ext. 225
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