The 47-story office tower that once bore the Wells Fargo name in downtown Miami has a new identity. It's now called The Metropolitan Miami, following a multimillion-dollar round of renovations to its lobby, lighting and common areas.
The rebrand was carried out by MetLife Investment Management and Cushman & Wakefield, according to Connect CRE, which described the building at 333 S.E. 2nd Ave. as a 780,000-square-foot tower. Other outlets have put the building's size differently over the years — Bisnow has reported it at 750,000 square feet, CoStar has listed it at 752,488 square feet, and The Real Deal has cited 752,845 square feet — so the exact figure appears to vary depending on the source and measurement basis.
Whatever the precise square footage, the renovation itself is described in specific terms. The program includes modernized lobby finishes, upgraded lighting, enhanced common areas and exterior landscape improvements, the outlet's report states. The building is reported to be approximately 75% leased, with a wide range of suite availabilities, including multiple full-floor opportunities, according to the same account.
A Tower With Hotel Neighbors
One of the building's selling points is its physical connection to the JW Marriott Marquis Miami and Hotel Beaux Arts, Autograph Collection, both owned by a MetLife affiliate. That integration is described as giving tenants and visitors access to meeting and event spaces, dining options and luxury accommodations, per the report.
The tower itself was originally developed by MetLife and completed in 2010, according to the same source. A separate account from Bisnow adds that the tower was built as the second phase of Metropolitan Miami in a joint venture between MDM Development and MetLife, with MetLife gaining full ownership of the building in 2011. Bisnow also reported that Wells Fargo relinquished the building's naming and signage rights and agreed to shrink its footprint in the tower to 25,000 square feet.
Not The Building's First Facelift
This isn't the first time the tower has gone through a renovation cycle. Back in October 2019, the building — then still known as the Wells Fargo Center — completed a $4 million, year-long renovation, according to the Miami Herald. That earlier project converted a 7,500-square-foot ground-floor shell space into a cafe and conference rooms exclusive to the building's office tenants.
The 2019 upgrade coincided with a leasing surge. Cushman & Wakefield Vice Chairman Brian Gale told the Herald at the time that three tenants had signed a combined 50,000 square feet in just two weeks, pushing the tower to 90% leased — the highest occupancy the building had seen since it opened in 2010, Gale said. Around the same period, Kaseya signed on for 101,000 square feet across four floors in the building for slightly more than 10 years, according to CoStar.
How The Rebrand Fits Into Miami's Office Market
A 2020 market snapshot described a flight-to-quality trend, with tenants moving from Class B to Class A buildings while existing properties renovated amenity space to keep pace, the Herald reported, citing JLL's third-quarter 2019 Office Insight report, which put the 2019 construction pipeline in Miami-Dade County at about 1.8 million square feet — the most since 2009.
In the third quarter of 2026, Miami had roughly 1.8 million square feet of office space under construction, placing it among the top five U.S. markets for office construction, according to Cushman & Wakefield. The firm also reported that Miami's overall office vacancy rate fell to 13.9% in the third quarter, its lowest level in six years, while average asking rents climbed to $67.77 per square foot, up 4.7% year over year.
Leasing activity, however, has cooled. Miami recorded more than 151,000 square feet of positive net absorption in the third quarter, bringing year-to-date occupancy gains to roughly 605,000 square feet, per Cushman & Wakefield's data. Total leasing for the year through the third quarter came in at nearly 1.3 million square feet, a 23.3% decline from the prior year.
