Allied Partners Tests Live Local Act at Savoy Hotel Site

Allied Partners wants to demolish most of the Savoy Hotel at 425 Ocean Drive in South of Fifth and replace it with a 38-story, roughly 480-foot tower, using Florida’s Live Local Act to claim height and density the site’s zoning does not otherwise allow.

Why it matters

South of Fifth is the most protected stretch of Miami Beach, and the Live Local Act itself carves out several of the state’s most guarded coastal districts, St. Augustine, Palm Beach, Key West and the postcard stretch of the Ocean Drive promenade, from its override. The Savoy sits outside that carved-out promenade segment, which is the gap Allied Partners’ proposal is built to exploit. If a historic art deco hotel one block off Ocean Drive can be entitled at 38 stories by committing 40 percent of its units to workforce housing at up to 120 percent of area median income, the same math works on any historic-adjacent parcel that falls just outside a named carve-out. That is the test developers statewide are watching: how narrowly the exemptions in the statute actually draw, and how much of a legacy hotel a city can be forced to let go in exchange for the workforce set-aside. Allied Partners already has a contentious history at this address. The firm previously sought $50 million from an architect and an engineer over an alleged unauthorized demolition at the Savoy’s beach club, in a Miami-Dade Circuit Court case dating to 2022.

The numbers

The proposal calls for 150 residential units, including 60 workforce units, plus 76 hotel rooms and a beach club, designed by Arquitectonica for this stretch of South Florida. Most of the historic Savoy structure would be demolished, with only a portion of the original 1937 facade retained.

What’s next

No application for the Savoy site has reached a public hearing yet. Miami Beach’s Historic Preservation Board, Board of Adjustment and Public Safety and Neighborhood Quality of Life Committee agendas through their next scheduled meetings carry no item referencing 425 Ocean Drive. Reporting indicates Allied Partners submitted a proposal to the city in June 2026 after an April letter of intent, but until a filing lands on a city board’s agenda, the Live Local Act entitlement here remains a stated intention, not a granted one.