A Miami Beach high-rise proposal just got dramatically bigger. Crescent Heights now wants to build a 525-foot, 39-story tower at 824 Alton Road, a sharp jump from the 31-story, 120-unit version the developer floated just last year, according to plans detailing the project's growth.
From 404 Feet to a Near-Supertall
The project at 824 Alton Road in Miami Beach, Florida 33139, sits in Miami-Dade County and is being pursued under Florida's Live Local Act, the state law that lets qualifying workforce-housing developments bypass certain local zoning hurdles. As reported by Floridian Development, the revised version would rise 525 feet, up from the roughly 404-foot design submitted when the project first surfaced in September 2024. At that height, the tower would become just the third building in Miami Beach to climb above 500 feet, per the same outlet's reporting.
The unit count is climbing too. Plans now call for 149 residences, up from the original 120, with 72 workforce housing units and 77 market-rate residences, according to Floridian Development. That's a shift from the earlier design, which had offered 48 workforce units and 72 market-rate units, as Florida YIMBY notes. The market-rate apartments would average around 1,368 square feet, while the workforce units would be far more compact, averaging just 445 square feet.
Pools, Retail and a Bigger Garage
Communal amenities would be concentrated largely on the seventh floor, where a planned amenity deck includes multiple swimming pools, outdoor seating and terraces alongside 5,909 square feet of indoor amenity space, the same report states. Ground-floor retail would total 2,556 square feet, adding a commercial component to the residential tower.
Parking is expanding as well. The revised design includes a six-level parking podium beneath the residential tower, growing from 119 spaces in the original plans to 156 spaces in the latest version. Crescent Heights is developing the project, with RSP Architects handling the design, per the same account.
What the Live Local Act Requires
Under the Live Local Act, qualifying developments must designate at least 40 percent of their residences as workforce housing to access the law's benefits, which include relief from certain local zoning and density restrictions. State statute spells out those protections directly: a municipality may not require a qualifying multifamily development to obtain a zoning or land-use change, special exception, conditional-use approval or variance for the development, according to Florida Statutes Section 166.04151. The law also generally bars cities from restricting qualifying projects below specified density, floor-area-ratio and height thresholds. In exchange, the statute requires that at least 40 percent of units remain affordable rental housing for a minimum of 30 years.
At 824 Alton Road, the workforce-housing designation covers about 60 of the building's residences, with eligibility limited to households earning no more than 120 percent of the area median income.
Part of a Much Larger Wave
The Alton Road proposal is one piece of a much bigger statewide push. Activity under the Live Local Act has accelerated since it took effect, with tens of thousands of residential units now proposed or under consideration statewide, a significant share of them in South Florida, according to Urbanize Miami. The Florida Housing Coalition's tracking dashboard counts 223 Live Local projects totaling nearly 67,000 units proposed statewide, with 24 of those projects, totaling 9,400 units, actually under construction, per HousingWire.
That construction gap looms large over projects like 824 Alton Road. Reporting from the Miami Herald found that among a set of high-rise, high-density Live Local proposals it examined, not one had begun or announced the start of construction. The Herald also points to the scale of the underlying housing need, noting Miami-Dade has a shortfall of roughly 17,000 workforce homes, with the gap in low-income housing stretching to around 90,000 units. Other large Live Local proposals in the pipeline include a 3,233-unit project in West Little River, described as the county's biggest such plan, and a 48-story, 544-apartment proposal from Bazbaz Development in Wynwood, according to The Real Deal.
Separately, The Real Deal has also reported that at least 24,000 additional apartment units are in the broader Miami pipeline, a wave of supply that some experts say could eventually ease rent pressure even as population growth continues. Whether 824 Alton Road moves from renderings to a construction site remains to be seen, but for now, it stands as one more entry in Miami Beach's rapidly growing list of Live Local towers chasing the sky.
