Miami’s Bacardi Building To Be Redesigned Into Arts Park

The National YoungArts Foundation, founded 31 years ago by Ted and Lin Arison, has found its new home: the iconic Bacardi Tower and Museum complex along Biscayne Boulevard.
The campus will get a Frank Gehry-designed master plan and year-round programming to link downtown’s burgeoning arts scene with the hip Wynwood and Design District neighborhoods.
“This was really, I believe, a match made in heaven,” said Paul T. Lehr, executive director of YoungArts. “There was no better place for us to go and there was no better purchaser for this campus than us and what we were going to do.”
Lehr said Bacardi U.S.A. sold the 3.3-acre site at 2100 Biscayne Blvd. to the foundation for $10 million, though the market value was over $20 million. The blue and white tiled tower, by architect Enrique Gutiérrez, was completed in 1963.
YoungArts will move its administrative headquarters into the new building by mid-October.
An office area next to the tower building will be transformed into a performance space, and a parking lot will become a park that will attach to the existing plaza and green space, Lehr said.