The chef behind Michelin-starred New York City restaurant Rezdôra is bringing a new concept to Miami at the Allen Morris Brickell Park, one of the neighborhood’s few green spaces and one of the city’s most hotly debated development sites.
Coral Gables-based Allen Morris Companies plans to partner with Chef Stefano Secchi on Gavina, a 3,000-square-foot restaurant proposed at the 7,780-square-foot park at 25 Southeast 10th Street, the developer’s attorney Javier Fernandez told The Real Deal.
Fernandez said the restaurant is expected to operate for “the better part of the next five years” before Allen Morris Companies decides the property’s long-term future.
The City of Miami approved a temporary use permit for the restaurant in April, allowing the site to operate as a food service establishment for one year. The permit can be renewed annually for up to three years by the zoning administrator, with any further extensions requiring city commission approval.
It caps occupancy at 132 people, including employees and guests, and allows the restaurant to operate daily from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.
The park, one of the few public green spaces with a rare patch of trees in the middle of Brickell’s high-rises, was fenced off in recent weeks, and Allen Morris Companies secured a tree removal permit as it gears up to redevelop the site.
“The restaurant is not the final plan,” Fernandez said. “Certainly there is an interest in doing something else with the parcel.”
The permit is one of the first concrete steps toward redeveloping the property, which was the subject of nearly a decade of litigation between Allen Morris Companies and the city of Miami after the developer sued the city in 2014 for violating deed restrictions by allowing the now-shuttered neighboring restaurant Perricone’s Marketplace & Cafe to operate on portions of the park.
The late Allen Morris Sr. donated the land to the city in 1974 on the condition that it remain a public park, with ownership reverting to the family if it was used for any other purpose. A court sided with the developer in 2023, prompting the city to transfer the property back to the company and rezone it to restricted commercial. The zoning allows buildings up to 48 stories, plus up to 32 more in exchange for qualifying public benefits, for a maximum height of 80 stories.
The redevelopment has received pushback from residents who questioned whether the restaurant would eventually become a sales center for a larger residential tower after obtaining a rendering labeled “Brickell Park – Future Supertall Sales Center.”
“The building could be reused in the future to support that use, but it’s not the short-term use,” Fernandez said, explaining that developers often spend big bucks on sales centers that are later thrown away. While a sales center is “not imminent,” he acknowledged it is “not off the table.”
Locals criticized the rapid transit zone the site previously received, which was later rescinded, and appealed the tree removal permit, though the permit remains in place.
Fernandez said the restaurant would preserve much of the site’s mature tree canopy while opening the property to the public with landscaped open space surrounding the building. He said construction costs weren’t available but noted it would be “privately funded.”
Fernandez also did not immediately respond to requests for how much the restaurant would be paying in rent or what cuisine the concept will be.
Brickell is home to some of the highest restaurant rent prices in Florida. In late July, Japanese restaurant Omakai relocated from its neighborhood location in the Solaris condo tower, signing a lease for 2,500 square feet at 1108 South Miami Avenue, about a block from the park, at a rent of $120 per square foot, according to brokerage FA Commercial.
Just behind the park on the South Miami Avenue side, restaurant Negroni filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy that same month, listing about $224,000 in rent claims owed to the citizenM hotel, where it occupies a 4,200-square-foot space.
Chef Secchi is widely recognized for operating a pair of acclaimed Italian restaurants in Manhattan. He launched Michelin-starred Rezdôra at 27 East 20th Street in 2019 and Massara at 913 Broadway in 2024.
Allen Morris Companies is behind several high-profile South Florida developments, including the under-construction Ziggurat mixed-use project in Coconut Grove, Ponce Park in Coral Gables and, with Related Group, the completed SLS Lux Brickell.
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