Miami is the talk of Florida. The downtown office market still is swallowing 2 million square feet completed in the last couple years, but the absorption trend has been consistently positive. Hong Kong-based Swire Properties already is building its game-changing Brickell CitiCentre, which it plans to finish in three years with condos, a hotel, 520,000 square feet of retail and 230,000 square feet of offices. A second phase will bring another 700,000 square feet of offices.

Miami-Dade remains under-retailed and leads Florida in the number of retail sites with more than 300,000 people living within a five-mile trade area. Retailers are filling the holes. Fort Lauderdale builder Stiles this year finished a Biscayne corridor Publix and is building another on Miami Beach.

The antithesis of waterfront glitz — the industrial market — is strong. A new tunnel under construction will expedite PortMiami cargo to roadways. A deep dredge at the port will clear the way for super post-Panamax freighters and change cargo patterns along the Eastern Seaboard to Florida’s advantage. Expansion of free trade zones “would lead to even more industrial demand across south Florida,” says Steven J. Medwin, Jones Lang LaSalle’s south Florida managing director for industrial. In recognition of the growing importance of ports on the Eastern Seaboard, Jones Lang LaSalle relocated its port, airport and global infrastructure practice, under John Carver, from Los Angeles to Miami.

Sector	Vacancy	Rent (per sq. ft.)
Office	19.6%	$31.26
Industrial	6.2	4.48
Retail	5.3	30.19
» 1-Year Employment Change +10,800 jobs (+1.1%)

Southeast Florida's share of the state's commercial real estate sectors
Office	46.8%
Industrial	48.1
Retail	43.8
Area includes Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach counties