Community Spotlight on … the Miami Design District

By josephine on Aug. 13, 2008.

From the strange to the sublime, you can find what you’re looking for in the Miami Design District.  A small area just north of the neighborhood known as “Wynwood”, and a few minutes north up Biscayne Boulevard from downtown Miami, the Design District is bordered on the west by North Miami Avenue, it stretches east to the train tracks parallel to North Federal Highway, and covers the area from I-195 up to NE 41st Street.

Just hop on I-195 and you’re fifteen minutes from South Beach to the east or Miami International Airport to the west. The District proper, a three-block-by-three-block area, with design and architecture companies, upscale furniture stores, art galleries, fashion names, and a variety of high-end finishings suppliers, is the point of reference for the home furnishing and interior design industries in South Florida.

While the District is the epicenter of interior design in Miami, international recognition is the ultimate goal. The Design District’s new development plan is for a friendly community, based on changing the way consumers think about interior design process, and they are opening showrooms to the public as well as to the trade. This unique, pedestrian-friendly community is rapidly becoming all the rage with artists, interior designers, and fashion mavens alike. The District is staking its claim as the center of style, design, and culture.

Side streets are lined with boutique shops, galleries, restaurants, and outlet stores.

An amalgam of architectural styles, you can find everything from an early Florida train depot to a Rococo gas station. The main area still offers some single family homes and older 2-story apartment buildings.

High rises have not yet crept north of I-195 as they have in Wynwood or Midtown. To the west and north of the Design District are residential neighborhoods, mainly single family homes, with some low-rise apartments. Loft space is still available in the District itself, or there is plenty of room to grow in Wynwood, just to the south, where warehouses covers a much larger area.