Citadel, Santander Break Brickell's Office Drought With Two Towers

Brickell is about to get its first ground-up office towers since the pandemic hit, and both are being built by the companies that will anchor them. Citadel and Santander are pushing forward on separate skyscrapers a few blocks apart, Citadel on Brickell Bay Drive and Santander on Brickell Avenue, in a submarket that has not absorbed new Class-A supply in years.

Why it matters

“The reality is that we’re desperate for new space,” JLL executive managing director Steven Hurwitz told Bisnow. That is not broker hyperbole against a backdrop of an 11.8 percent direct vacancy rate for Brickell Class-A office, among the tightest readings in the country. Santander’s tower is the first office building to rise in Miami’s urban core since 2020, and both projects test whether occupier-led, build-to-suit towers can unstick a market that developers have mostly avoided since 830 Brickell delivered in 2019. Miami’s office market has run on scarcity for half a decade. These two towers are the first real answer to it.

The numbers

Santander’s 50-story tower at 1401 Brickell Ave totals more than 1 million square feet, split between 560,000 square feet of marketable office space and 165,000 square feet of retail. The bank broke ground in April 2025 and is targeting a summer 2029 delivery. Citadel’s 54-story tower at 1201 Brickell Bay Drive runs 1.7 million square feet, with Ken Griffin’s firm occupying roughly 560,000 square feet and leaving about 1 million square feet for outside tenants. Vertical construction is expected to start by the fourth quarter of 2026, part of a project Bisnow has valued at $2.5 billion, after Griffin spent more than $770 million assembling the full city block the tower sits on.

What’s next

Watch for Citadel’s site work to convert to vertical construction before year end, and for how Santander markets its 165,000 square feet of retail once demolition on the old bank building clears the block. Both towers carry multiyear timelines, so the next real test is whether either landlord signs an outside tenant to the space beyond its own footprint.