Court Forces New Hearing on 13th Floor's Nobu Tower in Brickell
IconBrickell II's win over a historic-boundary vote does not touch the tower's design approval, but it puts a fresh procedural clock on a project that already has $1 billion in reservations.
A Florida appellate panel sided with condo association IconBrickell II this week, ruling that Miami’s Historic and Environmental Preservation Board improperly denied the group a seat at the table before voting to shrink historic protections on the church lot where 13th Floor Investments and Key International plan their 75-story Nobu-branded tower. The Circuit Court of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, sitting in its appellate capacity, ordered the board back to the table for a new hearing and vote on the boundary change.
Why it matters
The ruling lands on a project that has already moved a long way down the entitlement and sales pipeline. The tower cleared Miami’s Urban Development Review Board in July, and developers reported more than $1 billion in reservations when they launched sales June 5. Neither of those milestones is disturbed by this decision, which reaches only the December 2024 vote narrowing historic protection on the First Miami Presbyterian Church property to the 1949 sanctuary, freeing the rest of the roughly 2-acre site, including the educational annex and parking lot, for the tower. But a re-vote is a real reopening, not a formality. IconBrickell II now gets to present evidence and question witnesses on a question the board answered without them the first time, and the city has signaled it will appeal to the Third District Court of Appeal rather than accept the do-over. For a project already collecting deposits, that is schedule risk layered onto a deal that otherwise looked closed out on design.
The numbers
619 Brickell by Nobu is planned at 75 stories with 296 residences priced from $3 million to more than $60 million, on a bayfront assemblage at 619 Brickell Avenue in Miami. IconBrickell Tower 2, the plaintiff, sits roughly 160 feet from the church property, within the 500-foot radius Miami code uses to grant adjacent owners standing to intervene in preservation cases. The circuit court’s order is dated July 16, 2026.
What’s next
The city has until Monday, August 17 to file its appeal, and officials have said they intend to. If the appeal fails or is not filed, the Historic and Environmental Preservation Board must re-open the boundary question with IconBrickell II as a full party, a process that could take months before a fresh vote. Watch whether 13th Floor and Key International start converting reservations into signed contracts on the timeline they set in June, or hold until the preservation question is settled.