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Historic downtown Miami post office is for sale

Downtown Miami's post office features intricate detail work, from its ornate moldings to the eagle cast in bronze on the elevator doors.

Downtown Miami's post office building, the circa-1912 historic landmark that served as the city's original Federal Courthouse, post office and weather bureau, is on the market.

The Scott Robins Companies, which purchased the corner Jewelry District property at 100 NE 1st Avenue at the beginning of the decade, is asking $10 million for the five-story, Neoclassic Revival-style building. An adjacent parking lot is available for $4 million. While the building can be purchased separately, if you buy the lot you have to buy the building as well, according to the Scott Robins Companies.

"It was one of the first buildings that had real stature in downtown Miami," Geitner, a project manager at the nonprofit, said, "and it's highly unlikely that anyone will be building anything like it in the near future."

The building's ground-level retail space formerly housed an Office Depot store. When the chain's lease expired, Robins completed the gutting of the space and restoration of the building's common areas, including the elevator, staircase and bathrooms in keeping with "historical vernacular," said Melissa Dunn, a broker with Scott Robins Companies.

The developer, who, along with his brother, Craig, helped launch a renaissance in South Beach with redevelopments of multiple properties there in the 1990s, paid $2.4 million for the building in 2000.

"The building is gutted and poised for an owner-occupant to come in and do what they want. Whether they set up a headquarters there or if a developer wants to come in â€" the building is not use specific," Dunn said.

"When you have a gutted building, it's an ideal state in which to sell," she said. "If you improve it... you spend a bunch of money and time, for what purpose?" A buyer might have different needs.

What a buyer will get from this building includes 14,000 square feet of retail and 22,000 square feet of offices, separately metered, with French doors, balconies and 12-foot ceilings. The fifth-floor offices have cathedral ceilings and skylights.

Outside of New York and Los Angeles, Miami has the third-largest jewelry district in the country in terms of square footage, according to Davon Barbour, the Downtown Development Authority's economic development director. It is estimated that more than $1 billion in diamonds, gems and jewelry is housed within the district's four city blocks.

Miami-based Zyscovich Architects was commissioned by Scott Robins in 2002 to address a wholesale overhaul of the jewelry district. Zyscovich created a three-part plan to give the district an identifiable image, restore architectural and urban qualities, and stimulate trade, according to the firm's Web site.

Now, Barbour said, the Authority is working on completing the design drawings for the comprehensive streetscape plan for the district.

Of the Post Office, Barbour stated that the Authority had heard about a number of potential uses, including a boutique hotel, upscale jewelry business, a religious institution and town homes.

"We would very much like to see it occupied, given that it's such a unique anchor building. And occupied with a quality tenant," Barbour added.

Geitner expressed that area merchants are hoping that whoever buys the building will have a nighttime use, especially in the ground level retail space. "As the area moves from being a strictly 9-to-5 place, we'd love to see whoever is in there have a nighttime activity associated with it," Geitner said.