Wynwood is poised for its next act, but how will that affect the neighborhood’s retail real estate landscape?
Ken Griffin’s $1.1 billion purchase of Moishe Mana’s 35-acre Mana Wynwood assemblage, which will bring a Carnegie Mellon campus and thousands of students to the neighborhood, is expected to drive up Wynwood’s retail demand and rents in a market where leases on blocks surrounding the future campus are already marketed at over $100 per square foot, and retail properties are listed for more than $70 million.
The district has evolved over the past decade from a neighborhood dominated by mom-and-pop boutiques and cafés to one with a mix of national chains, upscale restaurants and fashion brands.
The wellness trend is the latest retail category to make its mark on the neighborhood, with some of Wynwood’s largest leases — each long term and spanning at least 20,000 square feet — going to health-conscious eatery Pura Vida Miami, international workout apparel brand Gymshark and luxury wellness spa Sensa.
Now, it could be on the verge of another cycle.
Dwntwn Realty’s Tony Arellano compared the future of Wynwood to “a vibrant day in SoHo in New York, where you see people shoulder-to-shoulder, walking around and shopping.”
Go back even further to the 1990s and early 2000s, when Wynwood was known for its art galleries housed in repurposed warehouses dating from the 1940s through the 1980s, when manufacturing reigned supreme, and Puerto Rican factory workers who had migrated from the Caribbean and the Northeast U.S. influenced the community’s culture, which was dubbed “Little San Juan” and “El Barrio.”
As domestic manufacturers went out of business, warehouses closed and the neighborhood fell into economic decline. Reports of rising crime and racial tensions with law enforcement contributed to an increasingly unsafe environment throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s.
It wasn’t until 2015, when Miami created the Wynwood Neighborhood Revitalization District overhauling zoning to help turn the neighborhood into a mixed-use district, opening the door to more residential, office, retail and hotel development. The city and the Wynwood Business Improvement District have continued updating the zoning in recent years to make more development possible, including changes to parking, height, density and small-scale projects.
In recent years, Chipotle, Dave’s Hot Chicken, Starbucks, Sweetgreen and West Elm were among the national chains that have set up shop, as well as acclaimed restaurants including the London-based Sparrow Italia, New York City’s Pastis and Double Knot of Philadelphia. The clothing and apparel mix is more niche, catering to the streetwear and subversive aesthetics of Gen Z, with stores such as Pharrell Williams’ Billionaire Boys Club and San Francisco-based Dolls Kill, a rave-wear brand that started online before opening three brick-and-mortar locations in the U.S.
“It’s been cool to see that transformation from a vacant, functionally obsolescent, largely desolate urban area filled with blight and crime, to where we are today,” said Arellano, co-founder and managing partner of Dwntwn Realty Advisors.
Arellano was one of the early brokers in the region, part of Tony Cho’s Metro 1 all-star team, which dominated deals across Miami’s emerging markets in the early 2000s, including Wynwood, the Design District, Midtown, Little River and Little Haiti. Cho worked with Moishe Mana during the early stages of his Wynwood acquisitions, including the assemblage that eventually became Mana Wynwood, before Mana grew into one of the neighborhood’s largest landowners.
Since splitting from Metro 1 and launching Dwntwn Realty with Devlin Marinoff in 2018, Arellano and his partner have become go-to brokers for Wynwood and other emerging markets in recent years. They brokered Mana’s $24.5 million purchase in July from New York-based TriCap for the 13,000-square-foot retail building leased to Stephen Starr’s’ Pastis, Rüfüs du Sol’s Wynwood headquarters and transactions tied to the Goldman family’s mixed-use holdings.
Michael Comras of the Comras Company also got his foothold in Wynwood before the hype. Records show he paid $1.6 million in 2011 for the more than 7,000-square-foot property on Second Avenue and 23rd Street, along with the 5,000-square-foot building on the parcel behind it. In 2015, Coyo Taco, one of Miami’s most popular taco spots, opened its first location at the Second Avenue and 23rd Street property and has been operating there ever since.
Next door, the Goldmans paid $725,000 in 2015 for the 1,200-square-foot building, where Panther Coffee has operated since 2010. Arellano helped secure the lease and amend the zoning to allow the coffee shop to roast and serve coffee on site.
While Comras’ parcels are appraised at $8 million, and the Goldmans’ properties at a combined $4.3 million, including the 120-square-foot parcel behind Panther Coffee that they acquired in 2015 for $1.3 million, the Carnegie Mellon campus would expand the district and is expected to extend its influence to the Second Avenue corridor, potentially driving property values even higher, Arellano said.
That is already happening, despite imminent development hurdles.
Comras noted that Wynwood’s development has come with some “growing pains” to walkability in an area where retail heavily relies on foot traffic.
“You can’t walk down a block [in Wynwood] without construction, and this too shall pass in the next few years,” he said. “With Griffin coming in, and bringing Carnegie to the area, it’s going to have another lift and another transformation.”
Property Markets Group and Canada-based private equity firm Greybrook Realty Partners completed the Society Wynwood mixed-use residential, retail and office project in 2024 along Second Avenue, one block north and across the street from Comras’ Coyo Taco property.
The building was rebranded to Adam Neumann’s Flow co-living apartment tower this year after the billionaire WeWork co-founder acquired PMG’s stake in the property. Lndmrk Development, Torose Equities and Lion Development Group acquired the 42,000-square-foot retail portion in 2025 for an undisclosed price. The properties have 14 retail suites, including Starbucks, Chipotle and Dave’s Hot Chicken, and are 87 percent leased to 13 tenants. Asking rents range from $100 to $150 per square foot, with 5,500 square feet of vacant space marketed at $120 per square foot. The portfolio has a weighted average lease term of 9.3 years.
Last month, the owners tapped Arellano to market the properties for a combined $76 million: $54 million for the 31,070-square-foot building at 2431 Northwest Second Avenue and $22 million for the 11,020-square-foot building at 2401 Northwest Second Avenue.
The listing is less than 200 feet away from the site of the planned Carnegie Mellon University campus, which is set to open in 2028.
The Pérez family’s Related Group sold the 15,000-square-foot Casa Tua Cucina ground-floor retail space in their NoMad Residences project at 2700 Northwest Second Avenue to a Sunny Isles Beach-based LLC led by Hernan Gleizer and Fernando Alpern for $33 million in September. Gleizer and Alpern’s LLC also owns the building’s other retail unit, a 5,000-square-foot space with two outdoor terraces totaling 870 square feet, and are marketing the space for $95 per square foot.
While retail rents along Second Avenue are hitting $100 per square foot, average rents across the Wynwood/Design District market dipped slightly year over year, from $58.88 per square foot in the third quarter of 2025 to $58.23 in the third quarter of 2026, according to Colliers. Vacancy also declined during that period, from 9.7 percent to 7.9 percent. Retail inventory grew from just under 2.7 million square feet across 103 buildings to nearly 2.9 million square feet across 111 buildings. The Mana Wynwood deal was announced Sept. 30.
Felix Bendersky, principal and owner of F+B Hospitality Brokerage, which specializes in restaurant leases, said tenant demand has been fierce since the Mana Wynwood deal, but only certain types of operators will survive.
He said the right tenants are those “doing something different.” He believes mom-and-pop concepts with good prices and distinctive, quality food will thrive. But just because everyone wants to be in Wynwood doesn’t mean operators should rush in.
“It’s good when people slow down and don’t just throw money at 100 locations,” he said. “People are choosing neighborhoods a little more carefully.”
As for acquisitions, Apex Realty investment sales broker Jason Abitol said institutional investors have become the norm in Wynwood and are helping drive up property prices.
His team brokered the January 2026 sale of a two-building portfolio, including 2121 Northwest Second Avenue, home to restaurant tenants such as Astra, and the building directly across the street. Steve Rhodes sold the properties to institutional investor G Wealth Management. Abitol said the deal offered a snapshot of Wynwood’s market before the Mana Wynwood announcement, which he expects to bring a new level of activity to the neighborhood with Carnegie Mellon students and employees.
“The small returns that an institutional company is willing to accept for ownership in a neighborhood like Wynwood is making it very hard for the average Joe investor to compete here,” he said.
Read more
Map: Here’s where Wynwood investors and developers are spending big
Related Group sells Casa Tua space at NoMad Wynwood for $33M, Azora drops $21M for Coral Gables retail condos
Flow Wynwood retail near Ken Griffin’s megasite hits market for $76M
