UNI Tower Groundbreaking - Affordable Housing and Workforce Housing

Published on May 19, 2022

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MIAMI (May 19, 2022) – NR Investments, the Miami developer behind CANVAS (1600 NE 1st Ave) and Filling Station Lofts (1657 N Miami Ave), along with the Omni Community Redevelopment Agency (Omni CRA), celebrated the groundbreaking of ‘UNI Tower’, the City of Miami’s first-ever fully income-and-rent restricted residential building on Thursday, May 19.

UNI, to be located on 1642 NE 1st Ave, will consist of 252 affordable and workforce housing units in the heart of Miami’s Central Business District, making it a truly unique addition to the development landscape of Greater Downtown Miami. All of UNI’s apartments will be geared exclusively towards residents making between 60% and 140% AMI.

The 29-story tower will also incorporate 10,000 SF of office space and 4,500 SF of ground-floor retail.

“This is a very important day for our city,” said Miami Mayor Francis Suarez. “Making sure that our nurses, our police officers, our fire fighters, our teachers — our city’s finest, in sum — can live within Miami’s urban core, closer to their jobs, makes our city a better, safer, healthier place for its people.”

The project was made possible by the financial assistance of the Omni CRA, which provided a grant and entered into a tax increment funding agreement with the developer to ensure that all residential units in the development would consist of affordable and workforce housing.

“The Omni CRA is leading the way, both at the local and national levels, in deploying its resources to make affordable and workforce housing a reality in one of Miami’s most competitive and dynamic central neighborhoods,” said Omni CRA Chairman and City of Miami Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla. “This project, plus an upcoming development just three blocks south, will bring close to 400 rent-and-income restricted housing units to the city’s Central Business District, something truly unprecedented in the history of Miami.”

Besides developing CANVAS and Filling Station Lofts, NR Investments has been the main driving force behind the yearslong community event programming brought on by the Arts + Entertainment District, which played a key role in reactivating and re-energizing the Omni. “We are convinced that the neighborhood can’t be just about luxury development that prices its lower-income or workforce residents out,” said Nir Shoshani, a principal of NR Investments. “Our vision for UNI was about a building that served the people that serve the city. We celebrate and commend the Omni CRA’s foresight in creating public-private partnerships that make it possible for developments like these, which fulfill that vision, to happen”.

UNI is slated to be completed in the first quarter of 2024.