Genting Americas has secured a $500 million loan to refinance the mixed-use Omni Center, the sprawling 1.5 million-square-foot complex that sits between 1501 and 1645 Biscayne Boulevard near Downtown Miami. The property includes office space, a Hilton hotel, a parking garage, a U.S. State Department passport office and a private school, making it one of the busier pieces of real estate along the corridor even as the company's vacant lot next door remains stuck in limbo.
Wells Fargo is serving as administrative agent for the group of lenders behind the refinancing, according to Commercial Observer. The Omni Center was built in the 1970s and today features roughly 435,000 square feet of office space alongside a 527-room Hilton hotel and a 2,500-space parking garage. Genting Americas, a division of Malaysian casino operator Genting Group, purchased the property for $180 million through foreclosure in 2011.
A Complex That Houses a Lot More Than Offices
Beyond the hotel and office towers, the Omni Center is home to tenants that reach well beyond typical commercial real estate. The U.S. State Department operates a passport office inside the complex, while Keypoint Academy runs a private grade school on-site, per the outlet's reporting. Those fixtures have helped keep the aging 1970s-era property relevant even as newer office product has reshaped the surrounding Biscayne Corridor.
Office leasing at the site, marketed as 1501 Biscayne or The Omni Offices, has picked up steam recently. Colliers announced it was tapped as exclusive listing broker for office leasing at the property on behalf of landlord Resorts World Omni, according to Colliers. Planet Fitness signed a 26,000-square-foot lease over the past year, the brokerage's leasing report notes, while Keypoint Academy expanded its own footprint by another 30,572 square feet.
Leasing Numbers Tell a Conflicting Story
Toronto-based Skilled Trades College also leased 30,300 square feet at the property to open its first U.S. campus, the same Colliers report states. Figures for another tenant, Skyline Financial, diverge depending on the source: Colliers put the Miami-based consulting firm's lease at 25,420 square feet, while Bisnow reported the deal at 26,000 square feet. Either way, the property recorded about 112,292 square feet of leasing activity over the prior 12 months, representing 52.4 percent of the Biscayne Corridor submarket's total leasing volume, Colliers reported. Downtown Miami's broader office vacancy rate had declined to 15.3 percent by the third quarter of 2024, with 129,000 square feet of positive net absorption by quarter's end, according to the brokerage's data.
The Casino That Never Came
The Omni Center's momentum stands in sharp contrast to what's happening right next door. Genting Americas also bought a neighboring 15-acre site for $236 million back in 2011, with plans for a casino development that never materialized after the company failed to obtain a gambling license, Commercial Observer reported. That waterfront land remains mostly vacant today.
A 2023 deal to offload the land briefly looked like it might change that. A joint venture led by David Martin's Terra went under contract that year to buy the waterfront assemblage, not including the Omni Center, for $1.2 billion — a price confirmed by the Miami Herald at the time. But the transaction fell apart as the developer struggled to secure financing, according to the outlet's report. A representative for Genting Americas did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the refinancing, per the same account.
